Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story<\/p>\n
On April 7, Allbirds sent out a press release celebrating its new \u201ccanvas cruiser\u201d 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 \u201cpivot its business to AI compute infrastructure.\u201d AI comes at you fast.<\/p>\n
In fairness, it\u2019s been an eventful month for Allbirds. The startup\u2019s fall from grace has been long-brewing and well-documented, but here\u2019s 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 \u201cbrand management\u201d company that also owns the likes of Aerosoles and Ed Hardy. The price: $39 million. That was March 30.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cconvertible financing facility\u201d) into \u201chigh-performance GPU assets,\u201d eventually building out a \u201cfully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.\u201d As befits a reinvention of this magnitude, Allbirds will also get a new name, NewBird AI.<\/p>\n
Allbirds is hardly the only company to pivot to compute. Boom Supersonic is trying to build the world\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that the thirst for compute\u2014processing power for AI\u2014is nigh insatiable. Somebody\u2019s got to slake it; might as well be a shoe company. \u201cEnterprises, AI developers, and research organizations are unable to secure the compute resources they need to build, train, and run AI at scale,\u201d Allbirds\u2019 press release reads. \u201cNewBird AI is being built to help close that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear what exactly NewBird AI is bringing to the table beyond the cash to buy a bunch of GPUs. Maybe these days that\u2019s all it takes. This is all pending shareholder approval, but for what it\u2019s worth, investors love the move; Allbirds stock popped 400 percent on the news.<\/p>\n
AllBirds did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
If nothing else, the pivot perfectly encapsulates this extended moment of AI frenzy. Startups used to make things; now they buy processors. Warby Parker, you\u2019re on notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story On April 7, Allbirds sent out a press release celebrating its new \u201ccanvas cruiser\u201d 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 \u201cpivot its business to AI compute infrastructure.\u201d AI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}