Allbirds, once a buzzy shoe startup, pivots to AI

The shoe brand that was once a favorite of the Silicon Valley tech scene is moving away from footwear and onto what its wearers have been obsessing over the most: AI.

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Allbirds announced on Wednesday that it would be pivoting to focus on AI compute infrastructure, changing its name to “NewBird AI.” The company said it struck a $50 million agreement to fund the new venture.

Shares in the company, which have struggled over the past year, shot up by more than 300%.

Allbirds said in its release that it will use its initial capital to buy high-performance, low-latency graphics processing units — the hardware that powers AI’s capabilities known as GPUs — to try to expand long term as a GPU-as-a-service and AI-native cloud solutions provider.

“The rise of AI development and adoption has created unprecedented structural demand for specialized, high-performance compute that the market is struggling to meet,” the company said in the release. “NewBird AI is being built to help close that gap.”

Once the trendy shoe among the tech elite, Allbirds failed to capitalize on its hot start to become a major player in the shoe market, and the company’s share price declined steadily starting in July 2025. Earlier this year, Allbirds closed all of its full-price retail stores in the U.S., shifting completely to online sales.

Late last month, Allbirds sold its brand and footwear assets to the management and licensing firm American Exchange Group for $39 million. American Exchange Group is known for brands like Ed Hardy and Mudd, as well as tech wearables.

The shift to AI infrastructure comes at a time when demand for AI compute is at an all-time high, with AI companies racing to put out more and more models.

But abrupt moves like this haven’t gone down well in the past. In 2017, during a Bitcoin boom, Long Island Iced Tea shifted to cryptocurrency, changing its name to Long Blockchain. Later, the Securities and Exchange Commission delisted the company’s shares due to its failure to file financial documents. It also charged three people with insider trading before the announcement of the Long Blockchain shift that had sent its shares jumping nearly 400%.