Allbirds pivots to AI, seeks shareholder approval for NewBird rebrand

Allbirds turned a struggling footwear story into an artificial intelligence gamble, and investors instantly rewarded the pivot. The company said it will seek shareholder approval to rename itself NewBird AI after announcing plans to move from sustainable shoes into AI compute infrastructure, a shift that sent the stock soaring more than five-fold and briefly lifted its market value from about $21 million to roughly $148 million.

The company said it entered a $50 million convertible financing facility expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. At the center of the plan is a bid to buy high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and lease access to it under long-term arrangements, putting Allbirds into the fast-growing market for GPU-heavy infrastructure that has attracted some of the most aggressive capital in tech. Shares jumped intraday from under $3 to about $17, a 582% surge, as traders rushed into the once-fashionable brand.

Allbirds set a special shareholder meeting for May 18, 2026, with stockholders of record as of April 13 eligible to vote on the rebrand. If shareholders approve the asset sale, the company said it expects to issue a special dividend in the third quarter of 2026 to holders of record on May 20. The corporate reset follows an asset purchase agreement reached on March 29, 2026, under which Allbirds agreed to sell substantially all of its assets, including intellectual property, inventory, receivables, contracts and related assets, to Allbirds IP LLC, an affiliate of American Exchange Group, for $39 million. American Exchange Group is expected to continue selling products under the Allbirds brand.

The move marks a stunning pivot for a company founded in 2015 by Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger, which went public in November 2021 and was once valued at around $4 billion. By early 2026, Allbirds had already shut all of its U.S. full-priced stores, underscoring how far the brand had fallen before the AI detour. The market’s reaction suggests investors are willing to overlook the collapse of the original business model in exchange for a fresh narrative tied to demand for computing power, even if the long-term value of the shift remains unproven.