Allbirds, the once-popular shoe company, announced April 15 it is pivoting to artificial intelligence and will rebrand as NewBird AI, sending its stock soaring 600 percent. The company is selling its name and shoe business assets to American Exchange for $39 million while shifting focus to providing GPU computing resources for AI developers.
The pivot comes after years of struggle for Allbirds. Despite a $4 billion IPO in 2021 following the success of its Wool Runner shoes a decade ago, the business never turned a profit and saw sales plummet nearly 50 percent between 2022 and 2025.
NewBird AI plans to use initial capital to acquire high-performance GPU assets that will be deployed to serve customers requiring dedicated access to AI compute capacity. The company’s long-term vision is to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.
The pivot targets a market struggling with unprecedented demand for AI computing resources. GPU procurement lead times are increasing, North American data center vacancy rates have hit historic lows, and compute capacity coming online through mid-2026 is already fully committed, leaving enterprises, AI developers, and research organizations unable to secure the resources they need.
NewBird AI aims to help close that gap by acquiring high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and providing access under long-term lease arrangements, targeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service.
Source: The Verge