Flipboard announced the acquisition of Graze, an information-flow start-up company based in Portland, to further bet on open social network ecology. Graze created, published and managed tools for the Bluesky information stream and attempted to create a source of income by advertising as an creator and community operator.
The amount of the transaction was not disclosed. According to the company, this was a small acquisition. Graze raised only $1 million at the beginning of 2025 and the team currently has only 2 people.
Graze's main source is creating and advertising.
Graze products allow users to build and customise the Bluesky flow. Users can set this information stream as a home page, fix it in a common location, or access other AT Protocol-based applications.
According to the company, for 21 months on the line, Graze has distributed over 41 billion posts to approximately 12 million users. There are now more than 700 information streams on the platform and about 60 per cent of the traffic has been realized.
Graze's business model is for information stream creators to earn their income through advertising. Advertisements do not rely on cross-site tracking of users, but rather use language. For example, if a brand wishes to reach a game developer, it can buy a spot directly in the information stream operated by the community concerned.
In terms of income distribution, advertising income is divided into 70 to 30, with most of the income being owned by the information stream creator. The creator can also choose whether or not to access an ad.
Flipboard plans to expand to AT Protocol ecology
Flipboard has continued to set up an open social network in recent years. The company had previously used the Graze information stream technology in the new Surf application, which had also facilitated further cooperation between the parties.
Mike McCue, Chief Executive Officer of Flipboard, stated that the advertising technology did not need to track individual users and would not be completed at the expense of privacy. In his view, such a model would avoid excessive concentration of advertising revenues in a single platform.
Upon completion of the acquisition, Flipboard will continue to use the Graze technology and open the self-built flow to users. In the future, the capacity will not only serve Bluesky, but will also extend to more applications running on AT Protocol, including Flipboard's own products.
Both parties claim that the speed of consolidation will be faster.
Flipboard stated that there was a convergence of views on the direction of open social networks, but that there had also been duplication. Graze Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Devin Gaffney argued that the product would advance faster when it was integrated with partners with existing infrastructure and with the main advertisers.
For Flipboard, the acquisition was supplemented by information flow tools and advertising liquidity in open social ecology. For Graze, more mature business infrastructure and distribution resources were obtained.