Flipboard Acquires Graze: Revolutionizing Custom Social Algorithms
Flipboard has acquired Graze, a Portland-based startup that empowers creators and publishers to build, fine-tune, and monetize their own social algorithms without writing a single line of code.
Graze delivers an impressive feat: over 41 billion posts to 12 million users in just 21 months, primarily on the newly funded Bluesky platform. With only a two-person team—co-founder Devin Gaffney and engineer Nick Gerakines—Graze has gained significant traction. The acquisition terms remain undisclosed.
A Modest Beginning:
Graze raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from Betaworks, Salesforce Ventures Factorial, Apertu Capital, Skyseed, along with angels from Mozilla and Protocol Labs back in April 2025.
Flipboard’s Vision:
This acquisition aligns perfectly with Flipboard’s recent focus on the open social web under CEO Mike McCue. They’ve invested in AT Protocol, ActivityPub, and RSS and launched Surf—a browser for the open social web. Gaffney envisions a world where:
"Surf will be the browser for the open social web, while Graze will be the engine under those feeds."
The Shift to Curatorial Control:
As generative AI takes over legacy platforms, Gaffney argues that curating algorithms becomes crucial for sustainability in the attention economy. He points to Europe’s Digital Services Act, which requires very large online platforms to offer at least one recommender option not based on user profiling—a concept Graze aims to commercialize.
A European-Centric Open Web:
The center of gravity for the open social web is shifting towards Europe, with Mastodon as a notable example. The platform has adopted a non-profit structure and continues to evolve, providing users with various ways to follow creators without an account.
The Business Opportunity:
Two people built Graze’s feed engine on $1 million—a testament to the potential of curating attention. The next step is proving that this model can be more profitable than simply harvesting user data.