Shares of Smartbird, the company formerly known as Allbirds, skyrocketed approximately 50% on Wednesday, reaching $5.92 in heavy trading volume exceeding 41 million shares. The dramatic move came as the company completed its strategic exit from the footwear business, appointed a new chief executive, and significantly expanded its financing capacity to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The company, which now trades under the ticker BIRD, has undergone a complete transformation. It finalized the sale of its footwear assets to Allbirds IP LLC, an entity tied to American Exchange Group, for $40.7 million in cash, according to a June 15 filing summary. The deal included a $2 million deposit that has now been released, with an additional $3 million placed in escrow for 60 days.
In a leadership shakeup, Smartbird named Nadia Carlsten as its new president, CEO, and board member. Carlsten, a former executive at Amazon Web Services, brings extensive experience in cloud computing and AI. She previously worked at DCAI, SandboxAQ, and AWS, where she helped launch Amazon's quantum-computing service. She succeeds Joe Vernachio, who resigned from his roles and left the board. Additionally, Lily Yan Hughes, an independent director since October 2025, was appointed board chair. Annie Mitchell remains as CFO.
To fund its AI infrastructure push, Smartbird doubled its convertible financing facility to $100 million from $50 million. The funds will be used to acquire computing equipment and systems for running artificial intelligence workloads. The company is already in discussions with potential customers as it plans its first cluster deployments, which link chips together to handle AI processing.
In a statement, Carlsten described the transition as a “pivotal moment” for Smartbird, while Hughes expressed the board's enthusiasm for her appointment. The market responded positively, but attention now turns to whether the company can secure orders and execute its strategy.
Smartbird’s pivot was first announced in April, when it secured a $50 million facility aimed at AI compute infrastructure and outlined plans to move into GPU-as-a-Service and offer an AI-native cloud. GPUs, or graphics processing units, are specialized chips that can run many calculations in parallel, making them essential for AI workloads.
Investors are now focused on the upcoming asset-sale dividend. Smartbird announced that shareholders of record on June 25 will receive a dividend from the asset sale, payable within 60 days, though the company did not specify the amount.
Carlsten told Business Insider that Smartbird does not intend to compete directly with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or CoreWeave. Instead, the company is targeting customers seeking single-tenant AI infrastructure—dedicated systems for each client rather than shared resources.
However, risks remain significant. Smartbird is still in the early stages of its rollout, and the convertible financing could dilute current shareholders if debt is converted into equity. The company also flagged risks related to execution, financial targets, economic conditions, and capital raising in its forward-looking statements.
The Nasdaq was open for a regular session on Wednesday and will be closed Friday, June 19, for Juneteenth. This gives investors one more full trading day this week to react to the name change, CEO transition, and dividend record date.
