Perhaps you too can pivot to AI.
You might have heard the sneaker company Allbirds is trying exactly that. This once-highly touted company that made shoes out of wool for tech bros was valued at $4 billion soon after it went public in 2021, but the main business lines failed and the assets ended up worth a tiny amount of the peak total.
So Allbirds sold those assets for a pittance, and said it will rebrand as “NewBird AI.” The company also announced it had raised $50 million, supposedly for hardware to train advanced AI models. The stock rose rapidly from $2.49 to a close of $16.99, with the price later falling again, and now trading in the range of $6 to $7.
What is going on? One issue is that some underinformed investors may have been out there, looking to snap up any stock issue that appears related to artificial intelligence, given the current boom. In all likelihood, most of these investors will end up burned, but in the meantime some of them can flip it for higher value, as many did during the recent price run-up.
This part of the story is not new; during the dot-com boom of 1999–2000, we saw some businesses try to rebrand as internet companies. Sooner or later, corporate earnings—or the lack thereof—have a way of imposing reality.
