Now, it wants to be known as an AI company.<\/p>\n
The retailer\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that pivot Wednesday (April 15), saying it had struck a deal to raise $50 million to help it transition its business to artificial intelligence (AI) compute infrastructure, with the long-term goal of becoming a \u201cfully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.\u201d<\/p>\n According to a news release, the company plans to rename itself \u201cNewBird AI\u201d in connection with this change. The company\u2019s shoe business has been sold to\u00a0American Exchange Group<\/a>, \u201cwhich intends to continue to build on Allbirds\u2019 legacy,\u201d per the release.<\/p>\n The release adds that while enterprise spending on AI services and data centers are on the rise,\u00a0 North American\u00a0data center<\/a>\u00a0vacancy rates are at historic lows, with market-wide compute capacity coming online through mid-2026 already spoken for.<\/p>\n \u201cThe result is a market where enterprises, AI developers, and research organizations are unable to secure the compute resources they need to build, train and run AI at scale,\u201d according to the release.<\/p>\n Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n \u201cNewBird AI is being built to help close that gap. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The announcement comes a little less than three months after Allbirds\u00a0decided to close<\/a>\u00a0the remainder of its full-price stores in the U.S. to focus on its eCommerce platform, wholesale partnerships and international distributorships.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an important step for Allbirds, as we drive toward profitable growth under our turnaround strategy,\u201d Allbirds CEO\u00a0Joe Vernachio<\/a>\u00a0said in a news release at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been opportunistically reducing our brick-and-mortar portfolio over the past two years. By exiting these remaining unprofitable doors, we are taking actions to reduce costs and support the long-term health of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n The company had 29 stores in the U.S. and two international locations in September of last year, down from a respective 45 and 15 two years earlier.<\/p>\n As PYMNTS wrote soon after that announcement, Allbirds is part of a larger group of direct to consumer (D2C) companies\u00a0reducing their brick-and-mortar footprint<\/a>\u00a0amid rising costs.<\/p>\n \u201cPhysical retail brings rent, staffing, inventory management and buildout expenses that strain margins,\u201d that report said.<\/p>\n \u201cReturns add another layer of pressure, especially in apparel and footwear, where reverse logistics can erase the gains of an otherwise successful sale. As customer acquisition costs rise across digital channels, many\u00a0D2C brands<\/a>\u00a0are discovering that operating dozens of locations amplifies risk rather than diversifying it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, it wants to be known as an AI company. The retailer\u00a0announced\u00a0that pivot Wednesday (April 15), saying it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,5128,25,39,66,310,1379,311],"class_list":{"0":"post-5967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-allbirds","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-data-centers","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pymnts-news","14":"tag-retail","15":"tag-whats-hot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}