If you can somehow get your hands on a dozen NVL72 racks and duct tape them together in such a way to rent them out as a service, you can make your money back in less than 2 years at current demand pricing. $50M is more than enough to get this going.
This is absolutely doomed but how funny would it be if 50 years from now people share trivia like "Hey did you know that Allbirds started as a shoe company?" the way people talk about Nintendo starting as a playing card company
That makes me wonder, are there any major examples of this kind of abrupt pivot actually succeeding?
Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games.
Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's funny because the original leather business was spun out and still exists.
But abruptly going from shoes to AI datacenters, or iced tea to blockchain, etc I really wonder if there's any non-scam precedent of that abrupt shift actually working for a major known brand?
Samsung started as a trading company for dried fish, noodles and groceries. Now it does many things as a conglomerate but it’s mostly known as an electronics company.
Toyota started as a company to produce looms. It’s now mostly known as an automotive company.
It's not an expansion. The first line says they sold the shoe business which will continue under someone else. The company is changing names and its line of business.
I hope their foray into compute works out better than their shoemaking. Bought a pair, didn't even last a season before starting to fall apart (which would still be very on brand for the general AI sector).
It’s not an expansion, they are selling the shoe assets. It’s basically just starting a new business and redeploying capital (if there is any). It’s just a really odd way to announce and undertake it.
If my math is right they can acquire about 1800 (lowish end) enterprise AI-capable GPUs for $50M so exactly what are they going to do with that? Seems pretty small.
This reminds me of when the Long Island Iced Tea company renamed themselves to the Long Blockchain Corp in 2017 when crypto was soaring and their stock immediately took off.
Four years later the SEC charged three people (including the company's majority shareholder) with insider trading.
Most folks on the NotTheOnion subreddit (where you post actual news headlines that you'd assume would be from The Onion) say this is their recent favorite
I knew something was up when every morning I'd find my Allbirds mysteriously on top of my keyboard. And coincidentally, someone has been using all of my Claude tokens every night...
But my jogging has been great recently! I've been posting PBs on Strava, though I don't remember creating a Strava account any time... hmmm...
They were basically bankrupt 2 weeks ago and sold for $39M. The stock pop shows me that we're in a bubble of irrational exuberance. And what are they going to to with 50M? Buy a few racks of servers?
I hope this doesn't mess up their shoes. I am allergic to the plastic/leather in most shoes and allbirds is one of the few brands that typically is ok.
i do not know why this is surprising to literally anyone. did we think the D2C shoes made of felt were still a smashing business success/going concern? or have we not fully memorized the narratives that procure funding for struggling companies in this climate?
78 comments
allbirds: ok
me: i'd also like to buy compute capacity to run AI inference on the cheap lol do u know where i can find a good one
allbirds: ur not gonna believe this
Nintendo was a much more gradual product shift that makes sense in retrospect: playing cards -> tabletop games and toys -> video games.
Or another gradual example was Tandy Corporation, which went from making leather crafts -> general crafting/DIY to electronics crafting -> Radio Shack and Tandy computers. That one's funny because the original leather business was spun out and still exists.
But abruptly going from shoes to AI datacenters, or iced tea to blockchain, etc I really wonder if there's any non-scam precedent of that abrupt shift actually working for a major known brand?
Oh, there was a certain pair of Ohio bike shop owners who pivoted to powered flight some time back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nokia
Toyota started as a company to produce looms. It’s now mostly known as an automotive company.
Allbirds should've rebranded itself as AIbirds.
This reminds me of when the Long Island Iced Tea company renamed themselves to the Long Blockchain Corp in 2017 when crypto was soaring and their stock immediately took off.
Four years later the SEC charged three people (including the company's majority shareholder) with insider trading.
But my jogging has been great recently! I've been posting PBs on Strava, though I don't remember creating a Strava account any time... hmmm...
What, ah, do they have to do with AI?
Allbirds announces pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes 175%
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/allbirds-bird-stock-shoes-ai...
What?!
This is the height of ridiculousness.
I guess if there are "second chances" in American capitalism (and 3rd, 4th, 5th,...) then literally any pivot makes sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess then nobody should complain that everybody and their grandmas pivot to doing vibe coding, either. And if they produce AI slop, so be it...
As others have noted, this is like the crypto pivot that many companies did a few years ago
Invest now! This is the lowest AI stocks will ever be.