Allbirds is just the Latest Retailer Pivoting to Infrastructure

Eco-friendly footwear company Allbirds announced that they are pivoting to become an AI provider, utilizing a GPU-as-a-Service model. Led by a former professional soccer player (a demographic we’re partial to), AllBirds stock quintupled upon the announcement before falling back to be a comfortable margin above the previous level.

Though still worth only a fraction of its former $4 billion valuation, Allbirds is hardly the first company to pivot into IT infrastructure.   Amazon Web Services (AWS) originally appeared as a way for the retail giant to leverage unused portions of their vast compute resources, turning capacity into a revenue stream, a concept that was unpopular with Amazon investors at the time.  But Jeff Bezos gambled on the service at the right time with the right strategy for the direction technology turned immediately thereafter, building a web behemoth.

Our company, Direct LTx, grew out of the 50-location department store chain Boscov’s.   The retailer’s founder, the late Albert Boscov wanted to make sure that our hometown of Reading participated fully in the digital economy and purchased an energy utility’s large data center, giving us a sound foundation to build out as the IT infrastructure home for major Eastern Pennsylvania organizations, subsequently creating a history that has left us well-positioned for HPC and AI opportunities thanks to our experience with high-density computing.  

While Amazon and Boscov’s both continued as retailers, spinning off their tech businesses, Allbirds is leaving the shoe world behind completely.  Allbirds retail exit disappoints Direct LTx CEO Todd Taylor who is fond of his (non-AI) casual footwear from Allbirds and now will not be able to purchase a replacement pair when the time comes.