Former shoe company Allbirds completes AI pivot as Smartbird, hires new CEO with no team in place

The CEO of Allbirds' new AI biz has a plan, but no employees

When Allbirds pivoted to AI in April, it felt like a joke from Silicon Valley breaking free of the TV: The direct-to-consumer shoe purveyor whose flimsy kicks helped define what we'll loosely call Silicon Valley style had discovered a new trend to chase. The move was right out of the meme stock playbook written by Gamestop: Take a troubled public company, latch onto the hottest fad, and reap the rewards of a rising stock price as retail investors piled in. Well, it worked. The company sold its shoe business for $43 million, raised another $100 million from the stock market, and now it's called Smartbird. Now, Nadia Carlsten has to make it work. A former AWS executive with an engineering PhD, Carlsten most recently led the European compute company DCAI before she began yesterday as Smartbird's CEO. "We're going to be recruiting a brand new team for the AI business, and we're going to be getting an office," Carlsten told TechCrunch from Amsterdam. "The shoe business has officially closed as of yesterday, so that's all done...The first task that I'm tackling right now is rounding up the leadership team, looking for somebody to lead infrastructure operations, for example." Call it a startup with a sole founder and a very large seed round. What's next is less clear. Smartbird aims to be an AI infrastructure provider, latching on to the seemingly bottomless demand for compute to train and run deep learning models. But unlike neoclouds, which relentlessly arbitrage the price of chips against the cost of GPU time or inference tokens, Carlsten will be aiming at more carefully managed deployments. The ideal Smartbird customers need direct control over the servers running their models -- typically for political or business-model reasons -- and value data sovereignty over the scalability of the public cloud. Carlsten couldn't yet estimate the size of that market, and argued that it was fairly nascent, since many companies are still just piloting AI tools. At DCAI, she worked with Novo Nordisk and other European firms who take a special interest in data sovereignty or operate bespoke models -- "we certainly have anybody that's within the pharmaceutical industry, energy industry, financial, the public sector," she said. To Carlsten's view, that means Smartbird isn't competing with hyperscalers or neoclouds, but with internal company projects. Still, there are established companies in this space -- Hewlett Packard offers a single-tenant managed AI compute service, as does Equinix, the data center giant. It's real business model, but it's not clear if it has the same growth potential as the cloud services, where expansion is the be-all, end-all. Carlsten said she expects to have compute clusters deployed for several customers by the end of the year. Other startups, like the inference cloud General Compute, have bigger ambitions -- the company announced a $300 billion chip order when it came out of stealth last month. Carlsten says she doesn't need big chip commitments to realize Smartbird's vision, because her potential customers needs sit in the range of hundreds to thousands of chips -- it's "not about large scales and huge numbers of GPUs, they're more about agility of these clusters, and more about having control of the infrastructure stack." Smartbird is also unlikely to compete with rivals on price, since cloud services go to great lengths to optimize chip usage 24 hours a day to offer the cheapest compute, though Carlsten suspects that companies with specialized workflows will be able to work more efficiently with their own servers. Demand for AI infrastructure is a powerful force in the market, driving up the stock prices for chipmakers, cloud providers, and energy companies, even convincing investors that orbital data centers are a feasible idea. But Carlsten insists that Allbird's transition was carefully thought through. "It wasn't, 'Let's just do AI, because it's AI, and it's hot,'" Carlsten, who will be paid a $700,000 annual salary and was awarded stock worth about $9 million to take the job, said. "It was really about, do we have a chance to build a business over time that is going to find this niche in the market and be able to grow over time?" When Allbirds pivoted, one thing that went by the wayside was its public benefit corporation status, which had been intended to enshrine the sustainability commitments that were part of the shoe company's pitch. PBC charters are often used by companies to highlight non-financial promises. OpenAI, for example, is a PBC with a focus on AI safety. This change of direction, however, suggests PBCs are hardly ironclad. Carlsten said that Smartbird's board made a long-term commitment to execute against her AI strategy. "There are some companies out there chasing AI," she told TechCrunch," but at the end of the day, what matters is, is there actual weight behind the chasing?"

Allbirds rebrands as Smartbird in AI pivot, hires former AWS executive as CEO; shares soar

June 17 (Reuters) - Allbirds (BIRD.O), opens new tab changed its name to Smartbird on Wednesday and appointed former Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO, cementing the former footwear maker's pivot to an AI infrastructure firm and sending its shares up more than 30%. The company had said in April it was shifting its focus to offer cloud computing capacity and AI services, leading to a more than five-fold surge in its shares. Including Wednesday's moves, they are up ⁠about 25% so far this year. Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas and Jonathan Ananda Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Allbirds continues AI pivot with name change and CEO hire, sending stock soaring

Two months after its unexpected artificial intelligence rebrand, Allbirds is changing its name to Smartbird and appointing a new chief executive. The shoemaker-turned-AI infrastructure firm on Wednesday named Nadia Carlsten as CEO and board member, replacing current CEO Joe Vernachio. Carlsten previously served as CEO at the Danish Center for AI Innovation, an AI infrastructure company partnered with Nvidia and home to a supercomputer known as Gefion. Shares of BIRD soared 34% on Wednesday. Allbirds surprised investors in April with plans to shift from making shoes to AI compute infrastructure and hardware. At the time, the company rebranded to NewBird AI and its market cap surged sevenfold. A month earlier, the company sold its footwear assets to the brand management company American Exchange Group for $39 million.

Allbirds renames itself Smartbird in AI pivot

The wool sneaker brand that was once worth $4 billion has completed its pivot, hired a new CEO from Denmark's national AI supercomputer lab, and doubled its financing to $100 million. It has yet to build any infrastructure or sign any customers. Allbirds, the sustainable footwear company that went public at a $4.1 billion valuation in 2021, has officially renamed itself Smartbird and appointed a new chief executive to lead its pivot into AI compute. Shares surged more than 50% on Wednesday morning before pulling back. The rebrand completes a transformation first announced in April, when the company said it would sell its shoe business for $39 million and become a GPU cloud provider called NewBird AI. That announcement sent the stock up 582% in a single session, though it gave back most of those gains within weeks. New name, new boss, no shoes Smartbird has appointed Nadia Carlsten as president and CEO. Carlsten previously ran DCAI, the Danish Centre for AI Innovation, where she launched Denmark's first AI supercomputer, Gefion, in partnership with Nvidia. Before DCAI, she spent three years at Amazon Web Services, where she helped launch Amazon's quantum computing service. She also worked at Google spinoff SandboxAQ and holds an engineering doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Carlsten replaces Joe Vernachio, who has resigned from the company and its board. In an interview with Business Insider, she said she was "blissfully unaware of all things Allbirds" and predicted that "in a few months, people won't even remember the shoes." The neocloud play Smartbird plans to provide dedicated AI infrastructure as a managed service, leasing GPU compute to enterprise customers under long-term arrangements. It doubled its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million to fund the strategy, though the convertible structure means existing shareholders face potential dilution. The pitch places Smartbird in a crowded field. CoreWeave, which pivoted from crypto mining to GPU cloud in 2019, will join the Nasdaq-100 later this month with a valuation above $40 billion, but it spent years building infrastructure before reaching that point. Nscale, another crypto-to-AI neocloud, hit a $14.6 billion valuation in March after signing deals with Nvidia and Microsoft. Former Bitcoin miner IREN secured a $2.1 billion Nvidia warrant as part of a five-gigawatt data centre deal, but it too had existing infrastructure to repurpose. Smartbird has none of that. It said it is "in active discussions with prospective customers" and "currently designing its first cluster deployments," which means it has no data centres, no customers, and no revenue in its new business. Echoes of the blockchain bubble The pattern is familiar. In 2017, Long Island Iced Tea rebranded as Long Blockchain Corp, saw its stock jump nearly 300%, and was later delisted from Nasdaq and hit with SEC insider-trading charges. Market analysts have drawn parallels between AI stock valuations and the dot-com bubble, with the S&P 500's cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio sitting near levels last seen in March 2000. Whether Smartbird can avoid a similar fate depends on whether it can build a real business from zero. A Nasdaq listing and $100 million in convertible financing is a head start over a startup. But it is a long way from a working data centre, paying customers, or a competitive moat in a market already dominated by well-funded neoclouds and hyperscalers.

AIbirds Was Sitting Right There: Allbirds Changes Name to Smartbird in AI Pivot

Do you remember, in the midst of the absolute worst of the crypto phase, when an iced tea company added the word "Blockchain" to their name and saw their stock price spike by almost 400%? We're officially at that stage of the artificial intelligence hype machine. Allbirds recently announced an AI pivot, and is actually going through with it. The shoe company is changing its name and bringing in a new CEO to lead the shift. The company has abandoned its arguably iconic Allbirds name in favor of Smartbird, which... sure? Pretty generic, feels more like the name of a startup for the Internet of Things era, especially since AIbirds was right there for them. Smartbird will be headed up by Nadia Carlsten, the previous head of Amazon Web Services' quantum computing efforts, per CNBC. She most recently served as the CEO of DCAI, an AI infrastructure company in Denmark. The company previously known as Allbirds, which made wool sneakers, will now be in the business of AI infrastructure as a service, according to Bloomberg. How, exactly? According to a press release the company issued when it initially announced this pivot, it claimed that it will "seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service." Why is a shoe manufacturer more equipped to do that than anyone else? It is unclear. What is clear is that whatever Allbirds was in the past will not be a part of its future. In an interview with Business Insider, new CEO Carlsten said she was "blissfully unaware of all things Allbirds," and insisted, "in a few months, people won't even remember the shoes." By her accounting, she's basically starting from scratch. All of the manufacturing equipment and anything related to the shoe-making business has reportedly been sold, and Carlston said that "anybody who was dedicated to the retail business is no longer part of the company," so she's hiring a whole new team from zero. Well, not exactly zero -- there's about $100 million in its coffers, per Bloomberg. But like, why not just launch a startup and raise that money? One that isn't a public company from day one and under the scrutiny of shareholders to turn a profit? The answer to that question may actually lie in the stock price. When Allbirds first announced it was going to pivot to AI infrastructure, its stock price jumped 600%. This announcement of a name change and new CEO resulted in a 50% spike at the time of publication. The market, it seems, is very dumb. Might as well capitalize. Congratulations to all those who get out while others rush in to hold the bag for them.

Allbirds Stock Pumps Again as Sneaker Firm Completes AI Pivot, Rebranding to Smartbird

The company boosted its convertible financing facility to $100 million to fund its AI pivot. Allbirds, the sneaker company once known for its wool runners and sustainability-driven branding, is shedding its footwear roots entirely and reinventing itself as an artificial intelligence infrastructure firm under a new name: Smartbird. The San Francisco-based company, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker BIRD, said Wednesday that it has completed the sale of its Allbirds shoe and apparel business -- as first announced in April -- and tapped Nadia Carlsten, a veteran of the AI and advanced computing industry, as its new president, CEO, and board member. Investors reacted positively to the latest update, with BIRD shares up 52% on the day to a recent price of $5.99. Back in April, shares pumped from a price of $2.49 to as high as $24.31 before giving up most of the gains. Even so, BIRD remains up 46% year-to-date. Carlsten arrives from DCAI, a GPU compute infrastructure company where she served as CEO and helped launch a sovereign AI supercomputer with Nvidia. Her résumé also includes stints at Google spinoff SandboxAQ and Amazon Web Services, where she worked on the launch of Amazon's quantum computing service. She holds chemistry and physics degrees from the University of Virginia and an engineering doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. She replaces Joe Vernachio, who is stepping down from the company and its board. Independent director Lily Yan Hughes has been named board chair, while Annie Mitchell remains chief financial officer. Allbirds previously planned to rebrand as NewBird AI before settling on the final Smartbird name. "Smartbird is entering the market at a pivotal moment in the evolution of AI infrastructure," said Carlsten, 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." As part of the transition, the company expanded its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million, giving Smartbird additional capital to build out what it describes as managed, dedicated AI computing clusters for enterprise customers. The company said it is in active talks with prospective customers and is designing its first cluster deployments.

BIRD takes flight: Allbirds pivot to AI company Smartbird is a huge change -- that's good for the stock

It's been a strange, winding path to an entirely new strategy for the company formerly known as Allbirds. On Wednesday, the company made two big announcements: It has named a new CEO, Nadia Carlsten, and it changed its name from Allbirds to Smartbird. It's also identifying itself as "an AI infrastructure provider," which, again, is a huge change from its previous iteration as a footwear maker. Carlsten will also join the company's board and replace current CEO Joe Vernachio, who had taken the helm of the company in March 2024. She was previously leading Amazon Web Services' quantum computing center, and was CEO at AI company DCAI. The news was evidently welcomed by the markets, as shares took flight after the announcement -- BIRD stock was up roughly 45% midday Wednesday, and was up 37% at the time of market close Wednesday. (However, the stock is still down 50% over the past year.)

Allbirds rebrands as Smartbird in AI pivot, hires former AWS executive as CEO

Allbirds is now Smartbird. The company has a new president and CEO, Nadia Carlsten. Smartbird is shifting focus to AI infrastructure and cloud computing. This move follows a significant surge in its share price. The company aims to provide AI infrastructure as a managed service. It is in discussions with potential customers and planning its first deployments. Allbirds changed its name to Smartbird on Wednesday and appointed former Amazon Web Services executive Nadia Carlsten as president and CEO, cementing the former footwear maker's pivot to an AI infrastructure firm. The company had said in April it was shifting its focus to ⁠offer cloud ⁠computing capacity and AI services, leading to a more than five-fold surge in its shares. Here are some details: Carlsten brings AI and quantum computing experience from DCAI, Alphabet spinoff SandboxAQ, and Amazon Web Services, and has advised the World Economic Forum on computing and AI. She will take over ⁠from Joe Vernachio, who is resigning from the company. Annie Mitchell will continue to serve as the ⁠chief financial officer, and Lily Yan Hughes has been appointed board chair. Smartbird said it provides AI infrastructure as a managed service to save upfront equipment costs for clients. It is in active discussions with potential customers and is designing its first cluster deployments. "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," Carlsten said. The company also said it had expanded its convertible financing agreement to $100 million from $50 million and had previously indicated it would use the proceeds to acquire graphics processors. Allbirds shut most of its brick-and-mortar stores and sold its brand and footwear assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million in March.

Smartbird Stock's Momentum Score Surges As Allbirds Rebrand, AI Infrastructure Pivot And New CEO Hire Ign

Smartbird Inc.'s (NASDAQ:BIRD) stock saw a sharp surge in its momentum score, jumping from 9.74 to 73.20 on a week-over-week basis. A momentum score is a metric that tracks the strength of a stock's price trend by analyzing recent price movements and trading volume, helping indicate how strongly the stock is currently trending. Smartbird Rebrands From Allbirds In AI Pivot Last week, Allbirds renamed itself Smartbird and appointed former Amazon executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO as it completed its shift from footwear retail to an AI infrastructure business, sending shares up more than 30%, reported Reuters. The company had earlier announced a move into cloud computing and AI services, which helped drive a strong rally in its stock. Carlsten, who brought experience from Amazon Web Services, SandboxAQ, and DCAI, said the company was positioned to capture a major infrastructure opportunity. "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," she said. The company expanded its convertible financing agreement to $100 million from $50 million to support GPU purchases. Smartbird said it aimed to offer AI infrastructure as a managed service, reduce upfront hardware costs for customers, and was in early talks with potential clients while building its first computing clusters. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings showed a detailed breakdown of Smartbird Inc.'s price structure, indicating that its medium-term trend turned positive, while both its short-term and long-term trends remained negative, according to the latest data. Smartbird Stock Surges After AI Pivot Journalist Joe Weisenthal added that the stock had surged nearly 60% after the rebrand and leadership changes, as the former shoe company repositioned itself as an AI and data center-focused business. Separately, Sapte said they would consider buying $BIRD if its dividend yield remained attractive at 9.85% with a 65% payout ratio, describing it as an appealing investment opportunity. Price Action Smartbird closed at $5.12 on Tuesday, down 7.08%, with pre-market trading up 4.88% on Wednesday at the time of writing. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Proxima Studio on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Why Is Smartbird Stock Gaining Wednesday? - Allbirds (NASDAQ:BIRD)

The company is reshaping its leadership and financing strategy as it pivots toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. Leadership Transition And Rebranding Smartbird, an AI infrastructure provider formerly known as Allbirds, Inc., announced Wednesday that its board of directors appointed Nadia Carlsten as president, CEO, and board member. Carlsten replaces Joe Vernachio, who resigned from the company and its board. Simultaneously, independent director Lily Yan Hughes, who joined the board in October, assumed the role of board chair. Capital Facility Expansion Smartbird completed its definitive agreement to sell the Allbirds brand and footwear assets. Following the transition, the company increased its senior secured convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million. The underlying details, previously disclosed in a Securities Purchase Agreement dated April 14, were modified via Amendment No. 1 on June 15. This amendment increased the potential issuance of senior secured convertible notes by $50 million and set the conversion price at $4 solely for the increased amount. Executive Commentary And Strategy The corporate restructuring shifts the company's operational focus toward dedicated AI infrastructure managed services. In the announcement, Hughes commented on the transition: "We are thrilled to usher in this new era of the company with Nadia at the helm. Her groundbreaking work and visionary mindset will be instrumental in establishing a foothold in the market and building a scalable long-term solution for enterprise customers." Short Interest Report Short interest in BIRD edged down to 998,480 shares from 1.01 million in the latest reporting period, representing 18.75% of the float. Based on average daily trading volume of 463,980 shares, it would take 2.15 days for holders of this short interest to close out their positions without sending the stock sharply higher. BIRD Price Action: Smartbird shares were up 45.79% at $5.74 at the time of publication on Wednesday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo via Shutterstock This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Smartbird stock surges 25% on new CEO appointment By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Smartbird, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIRD) shares rose 25% Wednesday following the appointment of Nadia Carlsten as president and chief executive officer after the company completed the sale of its Allbirds footwear assets. Carlsten, an AI and advanced computing industry leader, joined Smartbird's board of directors alongside her executive role. The company announced Tuesday that it has completed the previously announced sale of the Allbirds brand and footwear assets, marking its full transition to an AI infrastructure provider. Smartbird strengthened its balance sheet by expanding its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million. The company said the increased capital will support its AI infrastructure strategy. Carlsten brings experience in AI compute infrastructure and commercial execution. She previously served as CEO of DCAI, where she launched a sovereign AI supercomputer in partnership with NVIDIA. She also held positions at Google spin-off SandboxAQ as vice president of product and worked at Amazon Web Services, where she launched Amazon's quantum computing service. Carlsten replaces Joe Vernachio, who resigned from the company and board of directors. Annie Mitchell will continue as chief financial officer. Lily Yan Hughes, an independent director since October 2025, was appointed board chair. The stock has risen 44% over the past three months as the company shifted its focus to becoming an AI infrastructure provider. Smartbird now delivers dedicated AI infrastructure as a managed service, providing organizations with AI cluster capabilities without requiring them to finance or maintain the underlying infrastructure. The company said it is in discussions with prospective customers and is designing its first cluster deployments. Smartbird targets enterprises moving from AI experimentation to production-scale deployment. Carlsten holds bachelor degrees in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Allbirds rebrands as Smartbird in AI pivot, hires Amazon alum as CEO

STORY: Another AI company is off and running... and, this time, it's coming from former sneaker brand Allbirds. Allbirds on Wednesday officially changed its name to Smartbird, cementing its months-long transformation from shoe maker to AI infrastructure firm and sending its shares up as much as 75%. :: Archive The move comes after the company in April said it was shifting its focus to offer cloud computing capacity and AI services, leading to a more than five-fold jump in its shares. The newly-named Smartbird on Wednesday also announced the appointment of former Amazon executive Nadia Carlsten as its new CEO. :: Amazon Web Services Carlsten brings AI and quantum computing experience from Amazon Web Services and Alphabet spinoff SandboxAQ, and has advised the World Economic Forum on computing and AI. In a statement, she said that with a (quote) "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." Allbirds shut most of its brick-and-mortar stores and sold its brand and footwear assets in March to American Exchange Group for $39 million.