Allbirds Is Now an AI Company, and That Should Strike Fear Into Anyone Investing in Its Competition

2 hours ago 3

Adam Levy, The Motley Fool

Mon, May 4, 2026 astatine 5:43 AM CDT 5 min read

Silicon Valley whitethorn person abandoned its favourite footwear company, but Allbirds (NASDAQ: BIRD) isn't abandoning Silicon Valley. The venture-capital-backed direct-to-consumer footwear institution was erstwhile worthy $4 billion. In March, the institution sold its footwear marque for little than 1% of that value, $39 million.

But Allbirds is similar a phoenix. From the ashes of its eco-friendly footwear business, it's emerging arsenic an artificial quality (AI) company. A $50 cardinal financing statement volition assistance it pivot into being an infrastructure-as-a-service unreality provider, akin to CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) oregon Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS). And it comes with a fancy caller name: NewBird AI.

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Allbird's banal got a monolithic popular erstwhile it made the announcement, increasing by astir sevenfold successful value. And portion the stock terms has settled importantly little since the announcement, it's inactive up by astir 167% from its pre-pivot price. The market's absorption to the quality should enactment immoderate fearfulness successful AI banal investors, particularly those buying shares of businesses successful the aforesaid enactment arsenic NewBird. And not due to the fact that the caller rival is simply a large menace to those more-established AI businesses, but due to the fact that it says thing astir however investors are valuing them.

A unreality graphic with glowing letters A I successful it.

We've seen this communicative earlier

This isn't the archetypal clip a struggling institution has made a displacement into a trendy concern that's wholly unrelated to thing it has done successful the past. Allbird's rebrand calls to caput however immoderate companies behaved during 2 different important periods successful caller marketplace history.

In 2017, Bitcoin was booming. The cryptocurrency marketplace and thing related to blockchain were attracting tons of capital. Companies were looking astatine however to incorporated blockchain exertion into their operations to amended information oregon speed. And a struggling iced beverage institution decided it could put successful blockchain, too. And thus, a microcap beverage institution called Long Island Iced Tea transformed itself into Long Blockchain.

The banal popped connected the announcement and stayed elevated for a while. But the announcement besides coincided with a cyclical highest successful Bitcoin. Over the adjacent year, the cryptocurrency would suffer 75% of its value. Meanwhile, Long Blockchain was delisted from the Nasdaq, accused of misleading investors astir its intentions to put successful blockchain technology.

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