This appears to be almost like a SPAC. Allbirds had already sold it's IP and other assets, now they raised new money and are continuing under a different name but they're still a publicly traded company.
So it's not really shoe retailer pivots to AI but a shoe retailer selling all assets and forming a new company but uses the previous public stock listing.
This would be my bet - filing for an IPO or even direct listing is months of SEC review, audits, underwriters, due diligence, etc. A shell with an existing ticker gets you access to that sweet retail investor cash almost immediately, and with less of those pesky regulators asking if you actually have a functioning product or company.
This is more akin to a reverse merger than a SPAC (eg. Berkshire Hathaway being a failing textile mill and WPP being a wire basket company) except it is unusual to see it happen within an existing leadership team. They sold off all their IP so figured they might as well use the shell to try and cash in on AI hype, I guess.
Can you explain to me how this isn't considered outright fraud? The SEC has rules specifically around the lifetime of a company / ticket in terms of things like inclusion in indexes and retirement accounts, right?
How does allowing this not simply encourage a world of, basically, stock market karma farming: making bullshit barely company companies, just to sell the ticket so they can be used to engage in a pump and dump scheme with the little wealth the working class has left?
> The company, valued at around $4 billion at its peak, sold its intellectual property and other assets two weeks ago for $39 million.
...used the ticker to build stock hype that will bring in another $50M:
> The company, which according to the release will be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.
...and is planning on using that $90M of capital to sell a few extra shovels to the marginal buyer in the latest hype market.
> “The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service,” the company said in the announcement.
This is really just picking the corpse clean... company lost 99% of value, dropping from $4B to $0.04B. This is just redirecting what little capital is left into something that might get a small return for whoever is left holding shares.
It's frustrating that Schwab does not allow me to buy puts for this symbol, and I haven't enabled margin for shorting because I always bought puts instead. Never seen a clearer short in my life.
It's not just Schwab, there aren't any options traded on BIRD. And shorting is not a guarantee. First you have to find a borrow, which if it's available probably costs >1000% annualized today. Then you have to be able to maintain that borrow, even if BIRD doubles from here.
Based on the price action today, this seems like a short squeeze.
So it's not really shoe retailer pivots to AI but a shoe retailer selling all assets and forming a new company but uses the previous public stock listing.
This is more akin to a reverse merger than a SPAC (eg. Berkshire Hathaway being a failing textile mill and WPP being a wire basket company) except it is unusual to see it happen within an existing leadership team. They sold off all their IP so figured they might as well use the shell to try and cash in on AI hype, I guess.
How does allowing this not simply encourage a world of, basically, stock market karma farming: making bullshit barely company companies, just to sell the ticket so they can be used to engage in a pump and dump scheme with the little wealth the working class has left?
This domain isn't exactly my forte...
They sold the Allbirds brand and IP for $39M:
> The company, valued at around $4 billion at its peak, sold its intellectual property and other assets two weeks ago for $39 million.
...used the ticker to build stock hype that will bring in another $50M:
> The company, which according to the release will be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.
...and is planning on using that $90M of capital to sell a few extra shovels to the marginal buyer in the latest hype market.
> “The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service,” the company said in the announcement.
This is really just picking the corpse clean... company lost 99% of value, dropping from $4B to $0.04B. This is just redirecting what little capital is left into something that might get a small return for whoever is left holding shares.
You know how adding ".ai" to your company name / domain name increases your valuation an order of magnitude or whatever?
Well has anyone tried chaining .ai's to their company name...???
For example could x.ai increase their valuation another 5-10x by renaming themselves x.ai.ai?
What about perplexity.ai.ai.ai?
Seems like a low-hanging fruit for increasing valuation / attention on your company, but let me know if I'm missing something.
That didn't end very well for them...
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LNXGF/
Based on the price action today, this seems like a short squeeze.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778038
Oddly enough it barely moved the price at the time. I think it’s fair to say that this is a highly suspicious sequence of events.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/02/18/how-a...
https://www.fastcompany.com/90711340/whats-happening-with-ga...
edit and of course https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47780223 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp.
PS: googling "allbirds bankrupt" shows that no, this company is not doing well. Lots of "What went wrong" articles,
and
https://wwd.com/footwear-news/shoe-industry-news/allbirds-ip...
https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/retail/allbirds-to-be...