Allbirds formally shifted its focus to AI when the shoe business was completed. The new company, Smartbird, the newly appointed CEO Nadia Carlsten, stated that the most urgent task was to build management, recruit staff and establish offices for the new business.

Carlsten worked in AWS, recently in charge of the European Calculator, DCAI. She stated to TechCrunch that the original shoe business had been officially closed the previous day, and that the company would then start from scratch to form an AI business team, including the search for key positions such as the head of infrastructure operations.

Switching from a shoe to a math service.

Allbirds had previously announced a transition in April, then sold footwear at $43 million, raised $100 million from the capital market and renamed the company Smartbird. This shift, according to the report, responds to the high level of interest in AI infrastructure in the capital market and contributes to corporate equity performance.

Smartbird is not a general cloud service provider, but an AI infrastructure provider. Carlsten stated that the company wanted to serve customers who needed direct control of the server and valued data sovereignty. Such clients are often motivated by political, compliance or business models and are reluctant to rely entirely on public clouds.

Targeting enterprises that value data sovereignty.

According to Carlsten, the target customer is closer to the enterprise in which the AI project is being built than the large-scale cloud computing buyer seeking the lowest price. She mentioned that such needs might exist in the pharmaceutical, energy, financial and public sectors, particularly in the context of the use of customized models and the high demand for data storage.

At the same time, she acknowledged that the market was still relatively early and that many enterprises were still in the pilot phase of the AI tool, making it difficult at present to estimate the exact size of the market. According to her plan, Smartbird hoped that by the end of the year, several clients would deploy a calculator cluster.

  • Target needs hundreds to thousands of cores. Film
  • The focus is not on large GPU clusters.
  • Greater emphasis on deployment flexibility and control of infrastructure

No price fight, first custom deployment.

Carlsten states that Smartbird will not compete with large cloud service providers at low prices. In her view, public cloud platforms often relied on round-the-clock optimization of chip utilization to reduce costs, while some enterprises with special work streams might be more efficient in using their own or exclusive servers.

The report mentions that this direction is not a blank market. Hewlett-Packard and Data Centre Operator Equinix provide single tenants, hosting AI computing services. Smartbird's path is more customized than that of some of the high-profile expanding computing entrepreneurship companies, rather than one-time lock-in orders for large chips.

Carlsten also stated that the company ' s turn was not simply to pursue AI hot spots, but rather to build a long-term business around a sub-market. According to reports, she earns $700,000 annually and receives about $9 million in equity awards.

Existing sustainable commitments faded with transformation

With the sale of the business, Allbirds ' former pro bono identity was abandoned. This identity was originally used to strengthen corporate commitment to sustainable development. It was noted that such corporate charters were often used to emphasize commitments beyond financial objectives, but that long-term constraints did not necessarily arise when corporate strategies shifted significantly.

Carlsten states that the Governing Council of Smartbird has made a long-term commitment to the AI strategy she has proposed, and that the key next is whether this vision can be truly operational.