What happened: Allbirds (BIRD) stock is up more than 30% on Wednesday as it continues its pivot from a sustainable sneaker business to an artificial intelligence company.
What’s behind the move: The company announced a name change to Smartbird on Wednesday and tapped former Amazon Web Services executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO, who also joined the company’s board of directors.
Carlsten previously served as the head of Product for AWS Center for Quantum Computing. She has also served as CEO of another AI infrastructure company, DCAI, and the Google spin-off SandboxAQ.
Independent director Lily Yan Hughes said the team is “thrilled to usher in this new era of the company with Nadia at the helm” and that she “will be instrumental in establishing a foothold in the market and building a scalable long-term solution for enterprise customers.”
What else you need to know: In April, Allbirds surprised Wall Street by announcing that it would pivot from being a sustainable sneaker company to an artificial intelligence company.
The stock soared 600% on the day of that announcement, as the company said it would seek to fill what it views as a gap in the AI market by providing high-performance AI chips and data center space to customers not currently served by hyperscalers. The stock has since come down from those sky-high levels but remains up 30% year to date.
The company said it is “in active discussions with prospective customers across its target verticals.”
On Wednesday, Carlsten said that there is a “clear opportunity to meet the growing need for enterprise-grade AI infrastructure that delivers control and performance without the capital and operational burden of hardware ownership.”
In a note to clients, JPMorgan analysts wrote that they expect AI capital expenditures of $5.5 trillion through 2030, up from $5.1 trillion in November.
Brooke DiPalma is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.
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