Allbirds — the company formerly known for its sustainable footwear — said it will operate under the name Smartbird and has named Nadia Carlsten as its new chief executive officer to accelerate the buildout of an artificial intelligence infrastructure business. Investors reacted sharply: the stock rose 77 percent following the announcement, and earlier, when the company first disclosed the strategic shift, the share price jumped nearly 600 percent in a single day. The report also cited a 39 percent increase as another measure of investor response.
Nadia Carlsten joins from roles that include product development lead for the quantum computing center at Amazon Web Services (AWS). She has also led the AI-infrastructure firm DCAI and served as CEO at SandboxAQ, which spun out of Google. Carlsten will also join the company's board of directors.
Independent director Lily Yan Hughes said Carlsten could play a central role in helping the company establish itself in the AI-infrastructure market and build scalable solutions for enterprise customers. According to Allbirds, the company has identified a gap serving clients that need high-performance AI chips and data-center capacity but lack access to the resources of the largest cloud providers.
In April, Allbirds surprised markets by announcing it would progressively move away from its original sustainable-footwear business model to focus on AI infrastructure. Since that strategic pivot, the stock has corrected significantly from its peak levels, but remains roughly 30 percent higher year-to-date.
The company said it is currently in discussions with multiple potential customers across different target markets. Carlsten has stated that there is a clear market opportunity to offer enterprise AI-infrastructure services that deliver high performance and greater control without requiring customers to build and operate their own hardware fleets.
This article does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation.
Tags: shoes, CEO, artificial intelligence, share price, cloud services, business model, chip, data centre, AWS, AI
