Smartbird's CEO talks about converting a shoe company into an AI player
Source: Business Insider ·
Smartbird CEO Nadia Carlsten spoke at Business Insider's #TheLongPlay on how the company went from selling sneakers to AI infrastructure.
From the source
Smartbird CEO Nadia Carlsten at Business Insider's The Long Play.Carl Timpone / BFANadia Carlsten, CEO of Smartbird, spoke on the public company's shift from sneakers to AI.When the AI pivot was announced, the company's stock skyrocketed. It has since come back down.Carlsten said Smartbird has a different approach to AI infrastructure, focusing on customer needs.Before Smartbird was powering large language models, it was making shoes.The CEO of the AI infrastructure company, Nadia Carlsten, spoke about the transition with chief correspondent Ben Bergman on Thursday at Business Insider's The Long Play.Its roots are the sustainable sneaker company Allbirds, which skyrocketed in the late 2010s. The shoes were particularly popular among the Silicon Valley crowd. Allbirds went public in 2021 before the market turned on many direct-to-consumer businesses. The stock quickly fell, and it sold to American Exchange Group in March for $39 million."The short answer is the shoe business wasn't…