Allbirds Rebrands to Smartbird and Names New CEO in Deepening AI Pivot
- Sara Montes de Oca
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
The company formerly known as Allbirds took another step away from its footwear roots on Wednesday, rebranding to Smartbird and naming Nadia Carlsten as its new chief executive — moves that sent shares of the ticker BIRD surging 39% on the day.
Carlsten replaces current CEO Joe Vernachio and will also join the company's board. She previously led Amazon Web Services' quantum computing center and held a role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Most recently, she served as CEO of DCAI, an AI infrastructure company that recently partnered with Nvidia and operates a supercomputer known as Gefion.
The Wednesday announcements mark the second major rebrand in roughly two months for the San Francisco-based firm. In April, the company renamed itself NewBird AI and announced plans to shift from making shoes to AI compute infrastructure and hardware — a pivot that caused its market cap to surge sevenfold at the time.
Before that transformation took shape, the company had already been shedding its retail past. In March, Allbirds sold its footwear assets to the brand management company American Exchange Group for $39 million. It also shuttered its U.S. full-priced stores in February.
The trajectory represents a dramatic reversal for a company that once defined itself through sustainable sneakers made from natural materials. Former professional soccer player Tim Brown and renewable resources expert Joey Zwillinger founded Allbirds in 2015, and the company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, surging 90% on its market debut. Since a November 2021 high of $577.80, shares had slumped nearly 99% amid mounting competition and slowing consumer trends before the AI pivot reignited investor interest.
Smartbird is among the latest wave of publicly traded companies repositioning themselves around artificial intelligence. The day after Allbirds' April rebrand, social media platform provider Myseum announced its own shift to AI. The pattern echoes Wall Street behavior seen during the height of crypto mania, when several companies pivoted to blockchain or announced their own cryptocurrencies. AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave, which went public last year, followed a similar path, transitioning from crypto mining to AI before its successful market debut.
The speed and breadth of Allbirds' transformation — from wool sneakers to a named AI infrastructure player with a supercomputing-experienced CEO — will likely draw continued scrutiny over whether the company's operational substance can support its renewed market enthusiasm.
Carlsten's background at the intersection of enterprise cloud infrastructure, government technology, and AI hardware positions the company to at least make a credible case to investors. Whether Smartbird can translate that positioning into revenue at a scale that justifies its valuation remains an open question as the AI infrastructure market grows increasingly competitive.
