Allbirds Completes Pivot to AI Infrastructure as Smartbird, Expands Funding to $100M

Allbirds, the sneaker company trading under ticker BIRD on Nasdaq, completed the sale of its shoe and apparel business on Wednesday and rebranded as Smartbird, an AI infrastructure provider. The company appointed Nadia Carlsten, a veteran of AI compute infrastructure who previously led DCAI and worked at Amazon Web Services and Google spinoff SandboxAQ, as president and CEO. Smartbird expanded its convertible financing facility to $100 million to fund its expansion into managed, dedicated AI computing clusters for enterprise customers.

Investors responded positively, with BIRD shares up 52% on the day to $5.99, and up 46% year-to-date. The company said it is in active talks with prospective customers and designing its first cluster deployments.