Smartbird, formerly Allbirds, named a former Amazon $AMZN Web Services executive as its CEO as the company completed its rebrand from footwear to AI infrastructure, according to Reuters.
The incoming CEO, Nadia Carlsten, will replace Joe Vernachio, who is resigning. Annie Mitchell will remain as CFO, and Lily Yan Hughes has been appointed board chair. Carlesten said in a statement that the company is "uniquely positioned to capitalize on one of the most significant infrastructure opportunities of the next decade."
Rather than requiring customers to purchase equipment outright, Smartbird offers AI infrastructure on a managed-service basis. The company has begun designing its first cluster deployments and says conversations with prospective clients are ongoing. A convertible financing facility the company had previously set at $50 million has been raised to $100 million, with the funds intended to go toward purchasing graphics processors.
The rebrand caps a rapid transformation for what was once a high-profile sustainable footwear brand. Allbirds announced plans to sell its shoe brand and assets and pivot to AI infrastructure, initially under the name NewBird AI, sending BIRD stock up more than 600% from under $3 a share at the time. American Exchange Group acquired the footwear brand and its intellectual property for $39 million in March, a sale that coincided with the closure of the majority of Allbirds' physical retail locations.
The company first announced a $50 million convertible financing facility when it changed direction, but that amount has now doubled to $100 million. When Allbirds went public in 2021, it was valued at over $4 billion. By 2025, yearly sales had dropped to $152 million, about half of the $298 million it made in 2022.
This shift has been compared to other big company changes during market booms, like when Long Island Iced Tea changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp. in 2017. That move caused its shares to jump before Nasdaq $NDAQ took the stock off its exchange the next year.