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Allbirds Pivots To Being An AI Company
Bird in the machine // Illustration by Kate Walker
Allbirds, which recently sold off most of its assets in a fire sale, is pivoting to become an AI-compute company.
Why It Confuses: Allbirds used to be one of the kings of DTC retail, so a move to AI feels… well… totally random. But with compute scarcity a real issue in the AI industry, maybe buying GPUs and rebranding as an AI company is just smart opportunism. Only time will tell.
Unboxed: Apparently, Allbirds can be anything.
What’s left of Allbirds is changing its name to “NewBird AI” (it needed a new name anyway since it sold the naming rights and IP to American Exchange Group for $39 million).
It has secured $50 million in debt to buy "high-performance GPU assets" that can be rented out for AI compute.
The company’s new mission statement is to become "a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider." So, yeah, that’s a big change from sustainable footwear.
Closing Thoughts: Stunningly, Wall Street seems to love Allbirds’ new flight path, sending its stock soaring as much as 876% and giving the company a new valuation of about $150 million. Still, that’s a far cry from the $4 billion it was once valued at when it went public in 2021.
Allbirds isn’t alone in making such a head-spinning identity switch. WSJ reports that Florida-based karaoke-machine company Singing Machine rebranded as Algorhythm Holdings… and dragged transportation stocks down after claiming to have developed an AI system that was “capable of increasing trucking efficiencies.” Bizarre times.
The Future: Jury’s out on whether Allbirds can reach new heights by getting into AI, but expect more distressed companies to follow their lead. Soon, everyone may have a little GPU side hustle as a new line of revenue.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.