Allbirds Rebrands as Smartbird, Names Former AWS Quantum Chief as CEO

Quick Facts

Allbirds officially renamed itself Smartbird Inc. on June 17, 2026, its second rebrand this year, and continues to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker BIRD.
New CEO Nadia Carlsten previously led Amazon Web Services’ quantum computing center and most recently served as CEO of AI infrastructure company DCAI.
Smartbird raised its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million to fund GPU purchases, with no employees, no office, and no deployed infrastructure yet.

Allbirds is now Smartbird. The company officially changed its name on June 17, 2026, and appointed Nadia Carlsten as president and CEO. The stock jumped from $3.84 to $5.48 that day, a 39% gain.

This was actually the company’s second rebrand in three months. On April 15, Allbirds announced a pivot to AI infrastructure and a temporary rename to NewBird AI. That announcement sent shares up 582%, pushing market cap from $21 million to $148 million in a single day.

Who Is Nadia Carlsten

Carlsten comes from deep inside the AI and federal technology world. She launched Amazon’s quantum computing service at AWS, served as Chief Innovation Strategist at the U.S. Department of Energy, and spent three years as Director of Commercialization at the Department of Homeland Security.

Most recently, she was CEO at DCAI, an AI infrastructure company that partnered with Nvidia and operates a supercomputer called Gefion. She also served as vice president of product at SandboxAQ, a Google spinoff.

She replaces Joe Vernachio, who resigned from the CEO role and the board. Vernachio will lead the Sorel brand at Columbia Sportswear. CFO Annie Mitchell stays on, holding a position she has held for three years.

Carlsten told Business Insider she was “blissfully unaware of all things Allbirds” before taking the job and predicted, “in a few months, people won’t even remember the shoes.”

The Business Smartbird Is Building

Smartbird’s stated goal is to become a GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider. The company plans to offer AI compute infrastructure on a managed-service basis, targeting enterprises in regulated industries including pharmaceuticals, energy, finance, and the public sector.

The model centers on single-tenant infrastructure, meaning clients get dedicated hardware rather than shared cloud resources. Carlsten said in a press release that “many organizations lack a practical path to deploy and operate the dedicated infrastructure these workloads require.”

To fund GPU purchases, Smartbird doubled its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million. The company also named Lily Yan Hughes as independent board chair.

Carlsten inherits a public company with cash but no staff, no office, and no live infrastructure. Her immediate task is building a leadership team.

How Allbirds Got Here

Allbirds was founded in 2015 by former professional soccer player Tim Brown and renewable resources expert Joey Zwillinger. The company went public on Nasdaq in 2021, surging 90% on its market debut and reaching a peak valuation of roughly $4 billion.

The collapse was steep. Sales fell nearly 50% between 2022 and 2025, dropping from $298 million to $152.5 million. The company posted a $77 million net loss in 2025 and said it had never turned a profit.

On March 30, 2026, Allbirds announced it would sell its footwear assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million. The sale included the brand’s intellectual property, customer relationships, and all remaining inventory, which carried a book value of $43 million at the time. Brand management platform WSG Brands is partnering on the deal.

The footwear brand is gone. What replaces it is a company with a Nasdaq listing, a nine-figure credit facility, and a CEO who says she has no nostalgia for the shoes.