Written by Purvi Agarwal and Anshuman Tripathy
April 16 (Reuters) – Sneaker company Allbirds’ pivot to AI computing is reviving a recent Wall Street trend. Small and medium-sized businesses are turning to technology-centric transformations to attract AI-hungry investors.
Allbirds’ stock price soared more than sixfold after the company announced it would rebrand itself as NewBird AI. This was quickly followed by social media company Myseum, which soared almost 150% after adding “AI” to its name.
As investor interest in technology continues to reshape business, here are some notable pivots U.S. companies have made to capitalize on the euphoria.
strategy:
Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, which started as a software company to help analyze financial data, transformed into one of the largest Bitcoin holders in 2021 and has since rebranded as Strategy.
Stocks saw their biggest yearly gains in 2023 and 2024, rising more than 300% each year as Bitcoin doubled in value. The stock has fallen more than 70% since its last all-time high in November 2024.
From crypto mining to AI infrastructure:
CoreWeave was originally an Ethereum miner founded in 2017, but shut down its mining operations a few years later. The company went public on the Nasdaq in April 2025 as a cloud infrastructure company valued at $23 billion, and soared more than 85% that year. The company is up 64% year to date in 2026.
Applied Blockchain and HUT 8 both started out as cryptocurrency miners, but have shifted their focus to data center hosting. The former established itself as Applied Digital in early 2023, and Hut 8 is expanding its data center business.
While Applied Digital’s share price growth has largely slowed in recent years, Hut8 has recorded an annual increase since 2023, thanks to both Bitcoin prices and data center demand.
After emerging from bankruptcy in January 2024, Core Scientific jumped on the AI bandwagon and partnered with CoreWeave to provide the infrastructure it was already using for Bitcoin mining. The company’s shareholders rejected a takeover offer from Coreweave last year.
Trump Media & Technology
Trump Media & Technology, majority owned by US President Donald Trump, was originally a social media company and the parent company of the Truth Social platform.
The company began expanding into digital finance last year with the creation of Bitcoin Treasury, a new business with Crypto.com through a blank check acquisition company.
The stock recorded its biggest daily increase in December 2025, when the company was considering separating the platform into a publicly traded company.
However, despite the appeal of digital token vaults attracting investor interest, their value has halved by 2025.
