Shares in shoe brand Allbirds rise 580% after it pivots from footwear to AI

lagniappe•about 3 hours ago

Reminds me of Long Island Blockchain

pipes•27 minutes ago

Exactly what I tought

shantocv•about 8 hours ago

This feels like the 2026 version of companies adding "blockchain" to their name in 2017 and watching the stock jump. The shoe business was real — they had a genuinely differentiated product with the merino wool. Pivoting from a physical product with brand recognition to "AI" when you have no obvious AI expertise or data moat is a tough sell beyond the initial hype pop.

flextheruler•about 4 hours ago

It honestly seems worse.

ninju•about 2 hours ago

They should go ahead and drop one the L's from their name and become ALBirds and further embrace the lunacy :-)

ChrisArchitect•about 1 hour ago

[dupe]

Discussions:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778762

ChicagoBoy11•about 4 hours ago

Am I the only one who couldn't tell whether this was real or not for a good long while? I legitimately wondered whether the BBC site might have been hacked. I just simply cannot find a way to make sense of just about anything in the news story; I had just assumed it would go under and that's that. Why would someone who has that kind of money to invest put it into this pivot as opposed to a completely fresh, new effort? What's the efficiency I'm not seeing?

crazygringo•about 1 hour ago

Me too. It had me genuinely wondering if the Brits have their own version of April Fools in the middle of the month.

Forget the AI -- I'm just as shocked to see that shares went from $500+ in 2021 to below $3 this year. That's insane. I had to verify it's actually real.

I thought this was just a normal shoe company that had invented a cool look with some good branding.

zardo•about 1 hour ago

It's already listed, so they can get retail gamblers to buy in on day one.

vrganj•about 4 hours ago

There's no efficiency. Markets are a casino where people with no domain knowledge and automated systems make bets.

If people stop betting on your thing, it behooves you to rebrand it into whatever the magic beans of the moment are.

dnnddidiej•about 8 hours ago

Kodak moment!

vrganj•about 4 hours ago

Sounds like we've almost reached the peak of this particular bubble.

Good riddance.

therobots927•about 1 hour ago

You’re getting downvoted by salty paper millionaires

Bombthecat•24 minutes ago

We are not at peak. More companies will follow claiming to be AI whatever. If like twenty or more followed, then we are close to peak

Shares in shoe brand Allbirds rise 580% after it pivots from footwear to AI

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