Flipboard Acquires Bluesky Feed-Builder Graze to Expand Open Social Web Monetization
Flipboard will acquire Portland startup Graze (announced Aug 2026) to bring privacy-focused, contextual ad monetization and creator revenue tools to Bluesky/AT Protocol feeds. In 21 months Graze delivered 41B+ posts to ~12M people across 7,000+ feeds, with 60% of traffic monetized and curators taking 70% of ad revenue.
Flipboard announced in August 2026 that it is acquiring Graze, a Portland-based startup that builds and monetizes feeds on Bluesky and the AT Protocol. The deal brings Graze’s privacy-focused ad technology and creator revenue tools into Flipboard’s open social web ecosystem.
Graze offers tools to build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds — curated post streams that users can set as their home feed or pull into other AT Protocol-compatible apps. Since launching 21 months ago, Graze has delivered over 41 billion posts to approximately 12 million people and hosts more than 7,000 feeds, with around 60% of its traffic currently monetized.
The company’s ad model is contextual rather than tracking-based. Instead of following users across the web, ads are matched to feeds by topic or community — for example, a brand targeting game developers can buy placement in a feed run by that community. Feed curators choose which ads to run and keep 70% of the resulting revenue, with Graze retaining 30%.
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said the approach “doesn’t have to surveil anybody, and it doesn’t have to violate people’s privacy,” adding that ad revenue “is being shared with the feed builder” rather than flowing to a single platform.
The acquisition grew out of an existing relationship: Flipboard had already been using Graze’s technology in its app Surf, and the two companies found themselves duplicating work while sharing a common direction. Graze co-founder and CEO Devin Gaffney said partnering with Flipboard gave him access to infrastructure he needed, particularly the company’s existing advertiser relationships.
Post-acquisition, Flipboard plans to let users build feeds across everything running on the AT Protocol, including its own app. Financial terms were not disclosed. Graze had raised $1 million at the start of 2025 and has two team members.