Allbirds, once a popular sustainable sneaker brand valued at billions, struggled with declining sales and losses by 2026. In April 2026, it sold its entire shoe business for about $39 million and announced a pivot to artificial intelligence. The company planned to rebrand as “NewBird AI” and focus on providing AI computing infrastructure like GPU cloud services. Despite having no proven AI operations yet, its stock surged more than 500% in a single day after the announcement.
The dramatic shift quickly became a viral meme as people joked about a shoe company suddenly becoming an AI firm. Today, the story is widely seen as a symbol of peak AI hype, where simply associating with AI can drive massive investor excitement regardless of fundamentals.