After selling its shoe business, Allbirds is turning to artificial intelligence

After selling its shoe brand and assets Last month, $39 millionAllbirds is moving towards artificial intelligence. Naturally, the company is also changing its name, since the Allbirds shoe brand was part of the sale. Introducing: NewBird AI, “a fully integrated cloud solution provider for GPU-as-a-service and native AI,” the company Announce Through investor relations location Wednesday.

The renamed AI company also announced a $50 million investment from an undisclosed institutional investor in the form of a convertible financing facility.

It’s objectively funny that Allbirds is becoming an AI company — not because it’s unusual for companies to pivot, but because of how extreme the pivot is. Shoemaker It was what the Silicon Valley tech crowd craved It will now be equipped with GPUs. It’s a bit silly – and risky – but you can see how the company came to this decision. After selling the assets and brand, Allbirds could retain the public company structure (traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “BIRD”) and then reuse it to invest in the hot AI sector.

This reminds us of the time in 2017 when Long Island Iced Tea is focused on blockchain technologyWhich prompted the stock to jump about 275% after the rebranding. This axis did not succeed, either Nasdaq delisted the stock The following year after the Bitcoin fever ended.

Allbirds-turned-NewBird is likely hoping for a different outcome.

The company says the financing and asset sale are still subject to shareholder approval, and a meeting is scheduled for May 18. If the sale is completed, shareholders will receive dividends during the third quarter. The new owner of the Allbirds brand and its assets, American Exchange Group, will continue to manufacture products for Allbirds customers.

Meanwhile, NewBird AI plans to use the new funding to acquire GPU assets, which it will offer to customers looking for AI computing power. Over time, the company hopes to grow its service offerings through partnerships and even strategic mergers and acquisitions – if the opportunity arises.