Allbirds' last San Francisco store in Hayes Valley closed in January. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Allbirds — San Francisco's once-ubiquitous wool shoe brand — is swapping out its reputation as a tech-bro staple for something more lucrative: AI.
Why it matters: Allbirds isn't just adjusting its business model, it's leaving the industry that made it a household name.
The company announced yesterday that it had secured $50 million in financing to rebrand as "NewBird AI" and move into selling AI computing infrastructure.
State of play: The new funding will be used to buy high-performance GPUs — the chips powering AI systems — and rent them out to companies that need computing capacity but can't get enough from traditional cloud providers, the SF Chronicle reports.