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Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure

https://ir.allbirds.com/news-releases/news-release-details/allbirds-inc-executes-50m-convertible-financing-facility
62•dmajka•5h ago

Comments

upmostly•4h ago
Literally had to check the date with this one.

What?!

schwinn140•1h ago
Same. thought this was an april fools joke.
threecheese•4h ago
Are we in a bubble yet? The sneakers are doing AI now.
yabutlivnWoods•1h ago
"Even if you escape the house the AI is in the sneakers!"
speakingmoistly•4h ago
I hope their foray into compute works out better than their shoemaking. Bought a pair, didn't even last a season before starting to fall apart (which would still be very on brand for the general AI sector).
elmean•3h ago
Each step powers one Claude conversation
aduffy•3h ago
On top of this whole thing just being ridiculous, $50mm is also just not a very impressive amount of money to build out an AI data center.
stathibus•1h ago
If you can somehow get your hands on a dozen NVL72 racks and duct tape them together in such a way to rent them out as a service, you can make your money back in less than 2 years at current demand pricing. $50M is more than enough to get this going.
giwook•16m ago
I'm not sure how many companies would trust a failed shoe company to be responsible for their compute.
mrhottakes•1h ago
The $50M is for keeping the company alive long enough for the c suite to finish tearing the copper out of the walls
dtagames•3h ago
It's not an expansion. The first line says they sold the shoe business which will continue under someone else. The company is changing names and its line of business.
nonameiguess•1h ago
That doesn't cause it to make any more sense. The leadership tab still shows the CEO is the same guy from the past 5 years, previously the President of Mountain Hardware and before that a VP at North Face, with a degree in Forestry Science.

What on earth qualifies this guy or this company to build out GPU as a service infrastructure?

The CTO is at least, as should be expected of any CTO, an actual engineer with a technical background, but he's been working in engineering leadership for Allbirds for the past 9 years, and as far as I'm aware, at no point in that duration did they own or operate data centers.

Skills can't seriously be that fungible that a complete lack of any domain-relevant experience means nothing. I have no idea how reputable "Chardan" is as an investment bank, but how on earth did they sell this to investors and who did they sell to? What on earth is a "convertible financing facility?" If I web search that, every result is a press release about Allbirds. Did this bank invent some new form of finance that only Allbirds has ever used?

donavanm•1h ago
FYI "convertible" instruments aren't new, I suspect its just unusual phrasing that's tripping up your search. "Convertible bonds" or "convertible securities" are more common terms IME. Either way it's typically a bond/security that can be held _or_ converted at a preset strike price. Eg a convertible bond has a slightly discounted coupon (interest) for the holder. The bond can be converted to a fixed number of shares (equity), effectively at at a pre defined price/share. If the per-share price appreciates the bond holder can convert at capture the vallue above their strike price. If the associated equity falls (or doesnt appreciate) the bond holder 1) holds to maturity 2) is senior to equity holders for recovery.

In short, the allbirds financiers are taking a slightly reduced interest payment in exchange for the option to capture stock price appreciation if the gamble finds a greater fool.

jjk7•50m ago
Allbirds ran on Shopify... was the CTO a shoe engineer?
darth_avocado•28m ago
You’re assuming this is a good faith effort to rebuild the company.

I have no proof of this, but if I were a gambling man, I’d bet this is a pump and dump opportunity for insiders who are stuck with large volumes of stock that has bottomed to almost nothing since the IPO.

austinbaggio•2h ago
This makes my start-up's pivots look a lot smaller
esafak•1h ago
Their shoes are great for pivoting!
teeray•1h ago
”AI” is the new “.com”
DeepYogurt•1h ago
The shoe company? Edit: The shoe company.
jmull•1h ago
I basically clicked in to this post because I thought it was funny that an AI company had the same name as a shoe company.

But, no, it’s actually the same company.

And a failed shoe company at that… I beleive they sold out for around $40M, which isn’t zero, but a lot less than the rounds of funding they raised.

nathan_compton•1h ago
I hope this doesn't mess up their shoes. I am allergic to the plastic/leather in most shoes and allbirds is one of the few brands that typically is ok.
mrhottakes•1h ago
They sold the shoe business for a new company to mess up
mlmonkey•1h ago
I knew something was up when every morning I'd find my Allbirds mysteriously on top of my keyboard. And coincidentally, someone has been using all of my Claude tokens every night...

But my jogging has been great recently! I've been posting PBs on Strava, though I don't remember creating a Strava account any time... hmmm...

eBombzor•1h ago
The tech bro shoe really living up to it's name
PierceJoy•1h ago
What a time to be alive.
dawnerd•1h ago
This a last ditch effort to pop the stock a little so investors can get out?
geophph•1h ago
Seemed to work
agrippanux•1h ago
If my math is right they can acquire about 1800 (lowish end) enterprise AI-capable GPUs for $50M so exactly what are they going to do with that? Seems pretty small.
ivraatiems•1h ago
I have a pair of Allbirds, they're pretty comfy. I like them.

What, ah, do they have to do with AI?

xnx•1h ago
Long Island Iced Tea Corp did this back in 2017 when they rebranded to "Long Blockchain Corp".

Allbirds should've rebranded itself as AIbirds.

watusername•1h ago
... and that was also a year before the crypto winter in 2018 :)
giwook•1h ago
LOL.

This reminds me of when the Long Island Iced Tea company renamed themselves to the Long Blockchain Corp in 2017 when crypto was soaring and their stock immediately took off.

Four years later the SEC charged three people (including the company's majority shareholder) with insider trading.

suzzer99•1h ago
This reminds me of when a coworker left to go help develop Technicolor's (yes, that Technicolor) new social media platform.
sgammon•1h ago
shoe shine boy is trying to sell me compute
ch4s3•1h ago
I personally welcome the new GPUs that smell like wet dog and look like a old subway sandwiched left in the rain.
Jamesbeam•36m ago
Thank you. Your comment made me laugh so hard.

I had some of those wool runners for a while and had a mid-twenties lady in the train sitting right next to me one rainy autumn day, and she looked at me until we had eye contact and said, "Sir, don’t take this personally, but your shoes smell like wet dog, it’s awful.” She was right. I bought her coffee on the way out to apologize. Last time I bought Allbirds.

ch4s3•2m ago
I once worked in an office that told everyone they had to stop wearing them. They are hideous and smell terrible at an impressive range.
palmotea•1h ago
This is good news for AI. These kind of pivots just show what a revolutionary and world-changing technology this is.

Invest now! This is the lowest AI stocks will ever be.

bigleaguechewy•1h ago
Sounds like pets.com in 1999
long-time-first•1h ago
No. This is the Jump the Shark moment for AI. Allbirds cannot compete with big AI players for GPUs As a Service.... This is nonsense. This company will go to Zero.
vurudlxtyt•1h ago
Do you recall the iced tea company rebranding to a blockchain play a few years ago?

Smells the same to me.

sgammon•52m ago
bad news for big shoe
durieuxa•1h ago
me: i would like to buy some sneakers

allbirds: ok

me: i'd also like to buy compute capacity to run AI inference on the cheap lol do u know where i can find a good one

allbirds: ur not gonna believe this

JohnTHaller•1h ago
Most folks on the NotTheOnion subreddit (where you post actual news headlines that you'd assume would be from The Onion) say this is their recent favorite
aaronbrethorst•1h ago
Stock’s up 600% on the ‘news’
suzzer99•55m ago
This just in: suzzer99 is pivoting to AI. Get in early.
dilberx•1h ago
Didnt they learn their lessons from oracle?
evan_•59m ago
This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company
theappsecguy•59m ago
Are we in a bubble yet? Still no? Ok...
0gs•57m ago
i do not know why this is surprising to literally anyone. did we think the D2C shoes made of felt were still a smashing business success/going concern? or have we not fully memorized the narratives that procure funding for struggling companies in this climate?
aanet•54m ago
SMH

This is the height of ridiculousness.

I guess if there are "second chances" in American capitalism (and 3rd, 4th, 5th,...) then literally any pivot makes sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I guess then nobody should complain that everybody and their grandmas pivot to doing vibe coding, either. And if they produce AI slop, so be it...

As others have noted, this is like the crypto pivot that many companies did a few years ago

ChrisArchitect•54m ago
Related:

Allbirds announces pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes 175%

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/allbirds-bird-stock-shoes-ai...

andy99•49m ago
It’s not an expansion, they are selling the shoe assets. It’s basically just starting a new business and redeploying capital (if there is any). It’s just a really odd way to announce and undertake it.
adrianmonk•29m ago
If their slogan isn't "The Sole of a New Machine", I'll be disappointed.
bpev•25m ago
It might be time for Long Island Ice Tea Corp. to transition from blockchain to AI.

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