Allbirds, known for its sustainable wool sneakers and which went public in 2021 at a $4 billion valuation, announced on Wednesday that it is shifting toward AI computing. The company has renamed itself Smartbird and appointed Nadia Carlsten, a former Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive, as CEO.
What happened
- Following the announcement, the company’s shares rose by more than 30 percent.
- The footwear business had been struggling for years: third-quarter revenue fell 23 percent and most retail locations are closed.
- In March the company sold its entire footwear brand for $39 million.
- After that sale, the company expanded its financing facility to $100 million to purchase GPUs and build compute capacity.
Why this matters
The move highlights strong demand for compute and how capital markets are chasing vehicles that can deploy GPUs quickly. For struggling public companies that can no longer revive their original product businesses, converting the listed entity into an AI compute play has become an increasingly common exit strategy.
Current status
Beyond the rebranding and financing changes, Smartbird has no operational compute clusters or running AI services yet. The shift to AI is so far largely a name change and a funding reallocation, but the market reaction was pronounced: the stock saw a sharp short-term rally, including an intraday jump of over 30 percent, and the source cites a five-fold rise from prior lows.
Conclusion
Allbirds’ transition to Smartbird shows how a company’s Nasdaq listing can itself become the most valuable remaining asset when the underlying product fails. Building a genuine AI-compute business will require deploying the purchased GPU capacity and delivering services, steps that the company has not yet completed.
