Credit: Gary Hershawn/Getty
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Allbirds plans to rebrand as NewBird AI and focus on AI computing infrastructure rather than footwear
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The company has raised $50 million in funding and aims to offer GPU-as-a-service for AI development needs
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Allbirds’ stock price soared more than 400% following the announcement after previously selling assets for $39 million.
Allbirds, once a trendy shoe company known for its wool sneakers, is getting into the artificial intelligence business.
The San Francisco-based company is pivoting from shoes to AI computing infrastructure, announcing on Wednesday, April 15 that it is changing its name to NewBird AI.
The move comes about two months after the company decided to close its remaining stores and about a month after the company entered into a deal with American Exchange Group to sell all its assets for $39 million, Bloomberg reported.
The switch for the company, which was once worth $4 billion, is puzzling to some.
“On the surface, this is a strange turnaround,” AI infrastructure expert Bill Kleiman told The Associated Press. “I’ve been in this industry for a while, and it’s not a very natural adjacency for a company like Allbirds to go from shoes to AI infrastructure.”
Still, the stock has more than quadrupled since the announcement, Bloomberg reported. According to CNBC, the stock is now more than $17, up from just under $3 three days ago.
Allbirds, Inc. announced that it has signed a deal with institutional investors to raise $50 million in funding and said its new long-term goal is to “become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.”
Additionally, the company said it aims to “acquire high-performance, low-latency AI computing hardware and provide access under long-term lease agreements to meet the demands of customers that cannot be reliably served by spot markets or hyperscalers.”
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“The increasing development and adoption of AI is creating an unprecedented structural demand for specialized high-performance computing, which the market is struggling to meet,” the company said. “NewBird AI is built to fill that gap.”
Meanwhile, American Exchange Group will continue to sell its products under the Allbirds name.
Read the original article on People
