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Formerly Soaring Shoe Brand Allbirds Sells Itself For $39 Million
(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Allbirds, the quarter-zip of footwear, is leaving shoes behind to become an AI infrastructure company

Allbirds shares rocketed higher on Wednesday.

Shares of onetime elder millennial footwear fave Allbirds are going absolutely vertical in Wednesday trading, following the company’s announcement that it is pivoting from shoes to, what else, AI.

Allbirds shares spiked Wednesday after the company’s announcement, which comes a few weeks after it entered into an agreement to sell its brand and footwear assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million.

Per Allbirds’ press release today:

“Allbirds, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIRD) (the ‘Company’) today announced the execution of a definitive agreement with an institutional investor for a $50 million convertible financing facility (the ‘Facility’). The Facility, which is expected to close during the second quarter of 2026, will enable the Company to pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider. In connection with this pivot, the Company anticipates changing its name to ‘NewBird AI.’”

The new company, NewBird AI, expects to use its initial capital to “acquire high-performance GPU assets, which will be deployed to serve customers requiring dedicated access to AI compute capacity.”

Allbirds’ move draws parallels to previous tech-focused pivots like Long Island Iced Tea’s late 2017 shift from iced tea toward the “exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.” That move initially sent the stock surging, closing up more than 180%. The company was delisted a few months later.

In its SEC filing on Wednesday, Allbirds added that, given its new focus, it will ask stockholders to approve a proposal to remove “references to the company being operated for the environmental conservation public benefit.”

“The rise of AI development and adoption has created unprecedented structural demand for specialized, high-performance compute that the market is struggling to meet,” the company said.

NewBird AI is hoping that serving that compute demand can get it back to the $4 billion valuation it had when it went public, and that selling GPUs to tech executives will prove a longer-lasting trend than selling semi-sustainable shoes to those same executives.

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Lululemon’s stretch getting tested: Stock plunges after after outlook is cut

Lululemon shares are down double digits in premarket trading after the company cut its full-year sales and profit outlook, overshadowing a Q1 beat and raising fresh concerns about the brand’s turnaround efforts.

The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue to be flat to down 1%, compared with its prior forecast for 2% to 4% growth. Guidance for full-year diluted earnings per share was dragged down to a range of $10.95 to $11.15, below the company’s previous guidance of $12.10 to $12.30 and well below Wall Street’s estimate of $13.26.

Key numbers for Q1:

  • EPS of $1.69 vs. the $1.68 expected.

  • Revenue of $2.47 billion vs. the $2.43 billion expected.

The modest top-line beat masked a widening divergence between Lululemons geographic markets. While international revenue rose 22% overall with a 30% increase in Mainland China, the bigger problem remains North America, where revenue fell 5%.

Interim co-CEO and CFO Meghan Frank acknowledged during the earnings call that recent product rollouts underperformed. A highly anticipated yoga campaign failed to generate its expected halo effect across broader product lines.

Profitability metrics took a major hit, with gross margins contracting by 410 basis points to 54.2% due to mounting tariff costs and promotional markdowns. Operating income consequently fell 37% year over year to $276.9 million.

“We experienced spikes of negative commentary in the media and on social channels with regard to our brand, which had an impact on traffic and overall top-line performance,” Frank said during the earnings call. “And second, not all of our product launches have met our expectations. While we have had several successful launches so far this year, we have seen others as we start Q2 not generate the anticipated guest response.”

Lululemons valuation has already been steadily compressing for years. While it was once one of retails richly valued stocks, investors have been questioning whether the company can return to the double-digit growth era.

The results also arrive during a leadership transition. Lululemon announced back in April that former Nike executive Heidi ONeill is set to take over as CEO in September, with investors looking to her to revive growth in North America and restore the brands growth.

As Lululemon faces both macroeconomic pressure and brand-specific challenges, its stock has dropped around 40% year to date.

markets

US job growth skyrocketed in May, blasting past expectations

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in the month of May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, sending 10-year Treasury yields higher.

The strong May job market surprised economists. Experts had predicted only 85,000 new jobs — just half the reported number. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, as expected.

The job growth story is a hopeful spot for the economy as consumers continue to feel inflationary pressure from the Iran war.

Job gains were buoyed by the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 70,000 jobs, as well as local government, healthcare, and education.

Both the March and April jobs reports were revised upward, making them collectively 93,000 higher than previously reported.

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