Allbirds announces pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes 175%

100

11vuio0pswjnm7 1 day ago 33 commentsRead Article on cnbc.com

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Discussion Sentiment

50% Positive

Analyzed from 720 words in the discussion.

Discussion (33 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

mikeve•about 24 hours ago

This appears to be almost like a SPAC. Allbirds had already sold it's IP and other assets, now they raised new money and are continuing under a different name but they're still a publicly traded company.

So it's not really shoe retailer pivots to AI but a shoe retailer selling all assets and forming a new company but uses the previous public stock listing.

kermatt•about 22 hours ago

So just starting a new and completely different company, but using an old brand name from a completely different business?

presbyterian•about 21 hours ago

They're not even using the same brand name; they sold the Allbirds name and are now "Newbird AI". I guess it's just to stay on the exchange?

garethsprice•about 20 hours ago

This would be my bet - filing for an IPO or even direct listing is months of SEC review, audits, underwriters, due diligence, etc. A shell with an existing ticker gets you access to that sweet retail investor cash almost immediately, and with less of those pesky regulators asking if you actually have a functioning product or company.

This is more akin to a reverse merger than a SPAC (eg. Berkshire Hathaway being a failing textile mill and WPP being a wire basket company) except it is unusual to see it happen within an existing leadership team. They sold off all their IP so figured they might as well use the shell to try and cash in on AI hype, I guess.

floatrock•about 20 hours ago

Basically.

They sold the Allbirds brand and IP for $39M:

> The company, valued at around $4 billion at its peak, sold its intellectual property and other assets two weeks ago for $39 million.

...used the ticker to build stock hype that will bring in another $50M:

> The company, which according to the release will be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.

...and is planning on using that $90M of capital to sell a few extra shovels to the marginal buyer in the latest hype market.

> “The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service,” the company said in the announcement.

This is really just picking the corpse clean... company lost 99% of value, dropping from $4B to $0.04B. This is just redirecting what little capital is left into something that might get a small return for whoever is left holding shares.

holtkam2•about 21 hours ago

Someone tell me if my idea is dumb:

You know how adding ".ai" to your company name / domain name increases your valuation an order of magnitude or whatever?

Well has anyone tried chaining .ai's to their company name...???

For example could x.ai increase their valuation another 5-10x by renaming themselves x.ai.ai?

What about perplexity.ai.ai.ai?

Seems like a low-hanging fruit for increasing valuation / attention on your company, but let me know if I'm missing something.

xg15•about 18 hours ago

ai.ai is still free!

usui•about 24 hours ago

Pets announces pivot from Pets to Pets.com, stock explodes 1000%

xg15•about 18 hours ago

Waait a minute, that sounds familiar...

graydoubt•about 22 hours ago

"Pets.com, because pets can't drive."

bl4ckneon•about 23 hours ago

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp.

That didn't end very well for them...

fanatic2pope•about 22 hours ago

Or "Linux Gold Corp".

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LNXGF/

al_borland•about 22 hours ago

These moves never do.

onychomys•1 day ago

They keep having to update the headline as the stock goes up, it's now at "more than 300%".

frizlab•about 24 hours ago

Now 400%!

apparent•about 21 hours ago

Seems weird the new name is singular ("Newbird AI") when the old name is plural. Wonder how they chose that. I can't imagine "Newbirds AI" was taken!

killingtime74•about 16 hours ago

You have already thought longer about the name than they have

skullone•about 24 hours ago

What a scam

SMAAART•about 16 hours ago

I smell a shareholders' class action lawsuit. Wait for it.

ChrisArchitect•about 22 hours ago

More discussion on announcement:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778038

eudamoniac•about 23 hours ago

It's frustrating that Schwab does not allow me to buy puts for this symbol, and I haven't enabled margin for shorting because I always bought puts instead. Never seen a clearer short in my life.

ProjectArcturis•about 22 hours ago

It's not just Schwab, there aren't any options traded on BIRD. And shorting is not a guarantee. First you have to find a borrow, which if it's available probably costs >1000% annualized today. Then you have to be able to maintain that borrow, even if BIRD doubles from here.

Based on the price action today, this seems like a short squeeze.

killingtime74•about 16 hours ago

Just use the new way which is starting a market on polymarket

epc•about 22 hours ago

Ah, yes, the Zapata Petroleum -> zap.com phase of the bubble.

fnimick•about 24 hours ago

Clearly not a bubble, though!

damnesian•about 24 hours ago

I tried suggesting this on a different forum and wow, did I get slapped down.

therobots927•about 20 hours ago

There was a highly anomalous spike in volume around April 1st in the stock: https://marketchameleon.com/Overview/BIRD/Summary/

Oddly enough it barely moved the price at the time. I think it’s fair to say that this is a highly suspicious sequence of events.

whalesalad•about 22 hours ago

700%*

killingtime74•about 16 hours ago

Peak AI (bubble)

SideburnsOfDoom•about 24 hours ago

Ah, so we have reached the "Pivot to NFTs, stock jumps" phase of the ""Pivot to AI" bubble.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/02/18/how-a...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90711340/whats-happening-with-ga...

edit and of course https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47780223 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp.

m4rtink•about 24 hours ago

So not long any more for this bubble as well ? ;-)

SideburnsOfDoom•about 24 hours ago

I am not the judge of that, but how this goes might be an indicator - i.e. over what timespan the pump, dump, crash of this stock plays out.

PS: googling "allbirds bankrupt" shows that no, this company is not doing well. Lots of "What went wrong" articles,

and

https://wwd.com/footwear-news/shoe-industry-news/allbirds-ip...

https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/retail/allbirds-to-be...