After selling its shoe business, Allbirds is now turning to artificial intelligence
Following the $39 million sale of its footwear brand and assets last month, Allbirds is making a drastic pivot into the artificial intelligence sector. As the “Allbirds” name was included in the divestiture, the company has rebranded as NewBird AI. On Wednesday, the firm officially announced via its investor relations site its new identity as a “fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider.”
The newly renamed AI company also announced a $50 million investment from an undisclosed institutional investor through a convertible financing facility.
There is an objective irony in Allbirds transforming into an AI firm. While corporate pivots are common, the sheer scale of this shift—from crafting the “it-shoes” of Silicon Valley to providing the GPUs that power it—is nearly absurd. Yet, beneath the surface, the move is a pragmatic play: by retaining its Nasdaq shell (trading as “BIRD”), the company can bypass the hurdles of a new IPO and dive headfirst into the lucrative AI market.
This move echoes the 2017 saga of the Long Island Iced Tea company, which pivoted to blockchain and saw its stock price skyrocket by 275% following the rebrand. However, that transition proved short-lived; the Nasdaq delisted the company the following year once the initial “bitcoin fever” subsided and the strategy failed to materialize.
NewBird AI is undoubtedly aiming for a more sustainable trajectory than its blockchain predecessors. The proposed financing and asset sale remain contingent on stockholder approval, with a meeting scheduled for May 18. Should the deal be ratified, shareholders can expect a dividend in the third quarter, while the American Exchange Group—the brand’s new owner—will take over the production and sale of Allbirds footwear.
NewBird AI intends to leverage its new capital to acquire GPU hardware, which it will then lease to clients in need of high-performance AI compute capacity. Looking ahead, the company aims to scale its service portfolio through strategic partnerships and potential mergers and acquisitions, should the right opportunities materialize
