Allbirds, the company that built its name on wool running shoes and a sustainability-first image, is walking away from footwear altogether. It has reinvented itself as an artificial intelligence infrastructure firm and adopted a brand new identity: Smartbird.
Out of shoes, into AI
The San Francisco company, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker BIRD, said Wednesday that it had completed the sale of its Allbirds shoe and apparel business, a deal first announced back in April. Alongside that exit, it appointed Nadia Carlsten, a veteran of the AI and advanced computing world, as its new president, CEO and a member of the board.
Why the market cheered
Investors welcomed the news, sending BIRD shares up 52% on the day to a recent price of $5.99. This is not the first time the stock has spiked this year. Back in April, shares jumped from $2.49 to as high as $24.31 before surrendering most of those gains. Even after that round trip, BIRD is still up 46% year-to-date.
Meet the new chief executive
Carlsten joins from DCAI, a GPU compute infrastructure company where she was CEO and helped launch a sovereign AI supercomputer in partnership with Nvidia. Her track record also includes time at Google spinoff SandboxAQ and at Amazon Web Services, where she worked on the launch of Amazon's quantum computing service. Academically, she holds chemistry and physics degrees from the University of Virginia and an engineering doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.
A reshaped boardroom
Carlsten takes over from Joe Vernachio, who is stepping down from both the company and its board. Independent director Lily Yan Hughes has been named board chair, while Annie Mitchell stays on as chief financial officer. Notably, the company had originally intended to rebrand as NewBird AI before ultimately settling on the Smartbird name.
The strategy and the funding behind it
"Smartbird is entering the market at a pivotal moment in the evolution of AI infrastructure," Carlsten said in a statement. "AI is rapidly becoming mission-critical for organizations across every industry, yet many organizations lack a practical path to deploy and operate the dedicated infrastructure these workloads require."
"There is a clear opportunity to meet the growing need for enterprise-grade AI infrastructure that delivers control and performance without the capital and operational burden of hardware ownership," she added. "With a differentiated strategy, significant capital, and the opportunity to build an exceptional team, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on one of the most significant infrastructure opportunities of the next decade."
To fund the shift, the company expanded its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million, giving Smartbird extra capital to build what it calls managed, dedicated AI computing clusters for enterprise customers. The firm said it is already in active talks with prospective customers and is designing its first cluster deployments.
