Allbirds has completed one of the more striking pivots in recent tech history, selling its core shoe business for $39 million and repositioning itself as NewBird AI, a GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider.
The company announced the rebranding and a $50 million convertible financing facility from an undisclosed institutional investor via its investor relations site on Wednesday. The move follows the sale of the Allbirds brand and assets to American Exchange Group, which will continue producing Allbirds footwear for existing customers.
Both transactions are subject to stockholder approval at a meeting scheduled for May 18. If approved, shareholders will receive a dividend in the third quarter of the year.
NewBird AI plans to deploy the new capital to acquire GPU assets, which it will offer to customers seeking compute capacity for AI workloads. The company intends to expand its service offerings through partnerships and strategic mergers and acquisitions over time.
The pivot leverages Allbirds' existing status as a public company traded on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BIRD, allowing the company to maintain its shell and redirect toward the AI infrastructure sector. American Exchange Group's acquisition of the Allbirds brand preserves the consumer product line while the parent company transitions entirely.
The move carries echoes of 2017, when Long Island Iced Tea rebranded as a blockchain company and saw its stock surge approximately 275 percent before the Nasdaq delisted the company the following year as investor interest in cryptocurrency cooled. NewBird AI is banking on a different outcome in the more sustained AI infrastructure market.