Once the footwear company of choice for fleece vest types in the late 2010s, Allbirds is now an AI infrastructure company, naturally. The firm on Wednesday renamed itself Smartbird and appointed former AWS exec Nadia Carlsten as chief executive.
BIRD shares popped 39% on the news, albeit from a low (sub $4) baseline, valuing the revamped company at about $48 million, or about one-thousandth the amount OpenAI plans to spend on capital expenditures this year. Ahem.
Oh, by the way: We’re off on Friday for the Juneteenth holiday in the U.S. (How should corporate leaders celebrate it? The great Ellen McGirt has you covered.)
More news below. Have a wonderful weekend. —Andrew Nusca
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