Eco-conscious footwear company Allbirds is now undergoing a radical reinvention into artificial intelligence.
The firm announced it has entered a definitive agreement with an unnamed institutional investor to raise US$50 million (NZ$84.5 million) in financing, with the explicit aim of transforming itself into an AI infrastructure business.
The company will also rebrand as NewBird AI and plans to deploy the funds to acquire graphics processing units (GPUs).
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.
The move comes just over two weeks after Allbirds sold its intellectual property and selected assets and liabilities to American Exchange Group for US$39 million (NZ$67.8 million). The group is a major player in accessories design, licensing and manufacturing and owns brands including Aerosoles, White Mountain, Jonathan Adler, and Ed Hardy.
In a media release, the company said, “The rise of AI development and adoption has created unprecedented structural demand for specialised, high-performance compute that the market is struggling to meet.”
“NewBird AI is being built to help close that gap.”
Meanwhile, AI infrastructure specialist Bill Kleyman described the pivot as unusual.
“On the surface, it’s a strange pivot,” he said.
“I’ve been in this industry a while, and a company like Allbirds moving from shoes into AI infrastructure is not a very natural adjacency.”
He also questioned the feasibility of the shift toward a “GPU-as-a-service” model, which would involve renting computing power to AI firms through large-scale GPU deployments in data centres typically operated by cloud providers such as Amazon or Oracle.
Kleyman noted that running AI infrastructure requires “access to GPUs in a constrained market, long-term power agreements, advanced cooling strategies, and a credible operating model,” and added that it is a highly capital-intensive sector.
He added that US$50 million is relatively modest for entering a capital-heavy infrastructure industry, noting that many firms are now attempting to reposition themselves as AI companies amid strong investor demand for the sector.