Shares in Allbirds surge after maker of wool sneakers announces pivot to AI

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Allbirds, the maker of minimalist wool sneakers beloved by Silicon Valley, announced on Wednesday that it is leaving shoes behind and pivoting to artificial intelligence.The new focus and rebrand as “NewBird AI” sent the company’s stock up 582% as of mid-day during a flurry of trading.The surging stock price and new direction is a bizarre, rapid turnaround for a company that had fallen into disrepair in recent years.Once valued at $4bn, Allbirds’ shares had lost 99% of their worth since 2021 and earlier this month the company announced plans for a $39m sale to brand management firm American Exchange Company.Allbirds’ declaration that it will concentrate on acquiring graphics processing units to help support AI compute stands out as one of the most baffling pivots of the AI boom, a period in which many companies have tried to shoehorn in AI to appeal to investors and the market.

The long-term viability of its plan is less clear than the immediate effect of turning Allbirds into something of a meme stock, with its value wildly fluctuating throughout the day.“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 in a statement.“NewBird AI is being built to help close that gap.”The company has secured $50m in funding from an unnamed investor for its new AI operation, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The filing also said that Allbirds would shift from its status as an eco-conscious public benefit corporation into a conventional corporation, stating that the new company “would be less focused on the public benefit of environmental conservation”.

Allbirds, soon to be NewBird AI, did not respond to a request for comment on its planned rebrand and pivot to AI.The company for years made sustainability central to its marketing, helping it court politicians and celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, who invested in the company in 2018 and touted it as a “model for the footwear industry”.Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama were among the influential figures seen wearing, or advocating for, the brand.Despite its initial success, the brand struggled to sustain its momentum and largely fell out of fashion.At the peak of Allbirds’ popularity, it had dozens of brick-and-mortar stores around the world but in recent years faced a drastic decline in sales and in the third quarter of last year declared a $20.

3m loss.Allbirds closed the last of its physical stores in the US in January.Allbirds is now waiting on shareholders to approve American Exchange Company’s purchase of the company in a vote next month.The company said in its statement that the sale will allow Allbirds “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”.
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Europe has only six weeks’ supply of jet fuel left owing to Iran war, says energy chief

Europe has only six weeks’ supply of jet fuel left before shortages will hit because of the Iran war, according to the head of a global energy watchdog.Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said there would be flight cancellations “soon” if oil supplies from the Middle East were not restored within the coming weeks.“I can tell you soon we will hear the news that some of the flights from city A to city B might be cancelled as a result of lack of jet fuel,” he told the Associated Press.The US-Israel war on Iran has caused turmoil in global energy markets since the first strikes at the end of February. In retaliation, Iran has effectively closed the strait of Hormuz, a vital export route for oil from the Gulf

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Tesco warns profits could fall amid Iran war uncertainty

Tesco has warned that profits could fall back in the year ahead, citing increased uncertainty caused by the conflict in the Middle East.Ken Murphy, its chief executive, said that despite concerns about the impact of the closure of the strait of Hormuz on oil, gas and linked chemicals, the UK’s largest supermarket chain was “in good shape” on stocks of fuel for its petrol stations and distribution network.He said Tesco was not currently seeing problems with the supply of food or groceries, or “meaningful” inflation except at the pump on its forecourts.Murphy said he did not recognise predictions from the UK’s Food and Drink Federation that food inflation could hit 9% amid fears of shortages. “None of our growers, suppliers or manufacturers have flagged any supply issues,” he said

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Snap Inc blames AI as it lays off 1,000 workers

Snapchat’s parent company plans to lay off 16% of its employees, around 1,000 people, citing “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence”, the social media company told staff on Wednesday in an internal memo. The staff reduction is part of a wave of tech industry layoffs in the past year, with many firms blaming AI for the cuts.Snap Inc’s layoffs follow demands last month from Irenic Capital Management, an activist investor whose portfolio manager wrote a letter to the Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, calling on him to reduce costs and headcount while criticizing the company’s current strategy. In Spiegel’s memo to staff, he claimed that the layoffs would move Snap towards profitability and suggested that artificial intelligence could fill the lack of human labor.“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote

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Amazon enters agreements for nine Australian renewable projects to power datacentres

Amazon has entered power agreements with nine new renewable projects in New South Wales and Victoria, as the technology company seeks to source renewable power for its datacentre operations in Australia.The nine deals, including one windfarm and 10 solar and battery projects, will take the amount of renewable energy Amazon is sourcing in Australia from 430MW to nearly 1GW.The power purchase agreements are contracts between energy providers and datacentre operators to meet the expected demands of their centres. Amazon has entered into agreements for more than 20 projects in Australia as it aims to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.These include power from Victoria’s Golden Plains 2, the largest windfarm in Australia, which began operating in 2024

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‘It was stressful’: inside Scotland women’s Rugby World Cup contract wrangle

“There were players who were definitely struggling,” says the former Scotland international Beth Blacklock of the contract uncertainty that surrounded the squad before their run to the 2025 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals.In pre-World Cup camps talks were taking place between players and the Scottish Rugby Union. Some of the 32-player squad had deals which ran until May 2026 but the rest of the team had arrangements which ended in October after the World Cup had concluded.The talks, which took place before the tournament began, were described as “disruptive” to their preparations by the Scotland captain, Rachel Malcolm, at the time. In November last year the SRU announced an increased number of 35 players would be financially supported but only 21 of the 32 World Cup squad were to receive a contract

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Gossip around Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers’s relationship misreads the WNBA

The former UConn star’s draft night should have been about her talent. Instead, speculation shows how the league is still being viewed through the wrong lensSign up for our WNBA 30 newsletterFor the first time in a while, there was no consensus on who would go No 1 overall in the WNBA draft this year. When the Dallas Wings did make their pick, they chose Azzi Fudd, who had distinguished herself under Geno Auriemma at UConn, including a national championship in 2025.The moment she was picked was pure: a delighted and seemingly nervous Fudd joined WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert onstage. She took photos with her jersey, made it through the ESPN interview that immediately followed, and beamed at her family and teammates in the audience