From wool sneakers to AI chips: Allbirds’ next move is hard to explain

Allbirds’ shift from sneakers to servers shows how powerful the AI incentive has become.

[Photo: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

The fall of former direct-to-consumer darling Allbirds has taken a very weird turn. Allbirds, the sustainable shoemaker that caught fire with the Silicon Valley set about a decade ago, will start selling silicon itself. 

The company said in a press release that it will transform itself into a business focused on leasing GPUs – the powerful graphics chips underpinning the AI boom that are in short supply and high demand, much to the chagrin of gamers and tech CEOs. The husk of the shoe company that once was will “pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.” 

The announcement does little to address the unprecedented weirdness of going from selling minimalist wool boots to hawking........

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