On April 7, Allbirds sent out a press release celebrating its new “canvas cruiser” collection and a partnership with Pantone, the color company. One week later, on April 15, Allbirds sent out a press release announcing that the brand will “pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure.” AI comes at you fast.
In fairness, it’s been an eventful month for Allbirds. The startup’s fall from grace has been long-brewing and well-documented, but here’s the short version. While its comfortable-yet-presentable footwear propelled it to a $4 billion valuation when it went public in 2021, its sales never quite matched the hype. After years of financial losses, it finally sold whatever was left of its intellectual property to American Exchange Group, a “brand management” company that also owns the likes of Aerosoles and Ed Hardy. The price: $39 million. That was March 30.
And now? American Exchange Group will presumably work to revitalize the Allbirds apparel business, starting with those canvas cruisers. But Allbirds itself will focus its efforts on turning a $50 million cash infusion (or “convertible financing facility”) into “high-performance GPU assets,” eventually building out a “fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.” As befits a reinvention of this magnitude, Allbirds will also get a new name, NewBird AI.
Allbirds is hardly the only company to pivot to compute. Boom Supersonic is trying to build the world’s fastest airliner, but will gladly sell its Superpower gas turbines to AI companies in need of data center energy. Most bitcoin mining companies got on the AI train months ago. Even Nvidia’s GPUs were originally a staple of gaming PCs. Allbirds appears to be the first, though, that got its start with a minimalist sneaker made from responsibly sourced Merino wool.
It’s true that the thirst for compute—processing data for AI—is nigh insatiable. Somebody’s got to slake it; might as well be a shoe company. “Enterprises, AI developers, and research organizations are unable to secure the compute resources they need to build, train and run AI at scale,” Allbirds’ press release reads. “NewBird AI is being built to help close that gap.”
It’s unclear what exactly NewBird AI is bringing to the table beyond the cash to buy a bunch of GPUs. Maybe these days that’s all it takes. This is all pending shareholder approval, but for what it’s worth, investors love the move; Allbirds stock popped 400 percent on the news.
AllBirds did not respond to a request for comment.
If nothing else, the move perfectly encapsulates this extended moment of AI frenzy. Startups used to make things; now they buy processors. Warby Parker, you’re on notice.