Smartbird Names Nadia Carlsten CEO After $143 Million Allbirds Pivot to AI Infrastructure
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Jun 19
Smartbird Names Nadia Carlsten CEO After $143 Million Allbirds Pivot to AI Infrastructure
3 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Jun 19
Summary
Nadia Carlsten started as Smartbird CEO on June 18, taking over after the former Allbirds completed the sale of its shoe business and began building a new AI infrastructure company from scratch.
The rebranded company has $143 million of fresh firepower — $43 million from selling the footwear unit and $100 million raised in the market — and Carlsten said her first job is hiring a leadership team and opening an office.
Smartbird is targeting customers that want single-tenant AI compute and tighter control over data and servers, especially in regulated sectors such as pharmaceuticals, energy, finance and the public sector.
Carlsten expects compute clusters for several customers by year-end, arguing Smartbird can win with deployments of hundreds to thousands of chips rather than hyperscaler-scale GPU fleets.
Her mandate follows an April pivot that dropped Allbirds' public benefit corporation status, turning a sustainability-branded shoe seller into a public bet on AI demand.