Allbirds Becomes Smartbird In AI Pivot, Names Former AWS Executive As CEO

Allbirds rebrands as Smartbird, pivots to AI infrastructure, and names former AWS executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO.

Allbirds has officially rebranded itself as Smartbird, marking a major strategic shift away from footwear into artificial intelligence infrastructure. Alongside the rebrand announced on Wednesday, the company named former Amazon Web Services executive Nadia Carlsten as its new president and chief executive officer.

The company had previously disclosed in April that it was abandoning its core footwear focus to enter the cloud computing and AI services space. That announcement triggered a sharp market reaction, with its shares surging more than five times in value over subsequent trading sessions.

Carlsten brings extensive experience across AI, cloud systems, and advanced computing. Her background includes roles at Amazon Web Services, DCAI, and Alphabet-linked quantum computing spinoff SandboxAQ. She has also served as an adviser to the World Economic Forum on emerging technologies in computing and artificial intelligence.

She will succeed outgoing CEO Joe Vernachio, who is stepping down from the company. Annie Mitchell remains in her role as chief financial officer, while Lily Yan Hughes has been appointed chair of the board.

Under its new identity as Smartbird, the company says it will focus on providing AI infrastructure as a managed service, targeting clients that want access to computing capacity without the burden of large upfront hardware investments. The firm says it is already engaging potential customers and working on the design of its initial large-scale computing clusters.

Carlsten described the strategy as a strong opportunity in a rapidly expanding sector, saying the company’s positioning, funding, and talent pipeline place it to benefit from what she called one of the most significant infrastructure build-outs of the coming decade.

The company also revealed it has increased its convertible financing arrangement to $100 million up from $50 million previously. The funds are expected to support plans to acquire high-performance graphics processing units needed for AI workloads.

The transformation follows a broader restructuring in which Allbirds shut down most of its physical retail locations and sold its brand and footwear assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million earlier in March.