Topline
The stock price of the former shoe company formerly known as Allbirds surged again on Wednesday after the company announced an official name change and a new CEO—about two months after surging then crashing following an abrupt pivot into becoming an AI company.
The former sneaker company also said it hired a new CEO in its continued hard pivot into becoming an AI infrastructure provider.
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Key Facts
BIRD was trading at $5.90 by 11:40 a.m. EDT Wednesday—a massive 49% increase, down from an even bigger spike immediately after markets opened.
Allbirds filed an updated form with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, officially changing its name to Smartbird and ending its status as a public benefit corporation.
The company also announced a new president and CEO, tapping Nadia Carlsten to lead the company that is now calling itself an “AI infrastructure provider.”
Carlsten is the former CEO of \ the Danish Center for AI Innovation and previously worked at Amazon Web Services in their quantum computing division, according to a press release issued on Wednesday.
The new company said it strengthened its balance sheet by doubling its amount of convertible financing from $50 million to $100 million, which it plans to use for “additional resources to execute its AI infrastructure strategy.”
Key Background
Allbirds began as a footwear manufacturer whose wool sneakers surged in popularity with San Francisco’s tech workers and executives a decade ago. The company was valued at $4 billion after an IPO in November 2021, but sales began falling during the pandemic. In April, Allbirds announced an abrupt pivot—the once-popular shoe manufacturer would sell its entire footwear business to a brand manager and reconfigure itself as an “AI compute infrastructure” company called NewBird AI. The company’s stock surged after the announcement, before quickly tanking the next day and falling for weeks until Wednesday’s announcement.