AIbirds

I feel like, if you ran a big technology company, and you were looking to expand your artificial intelligence capabilities and needed to rent access to graphics processing units, and a GPU-as-a-service/AI-cloud company came to pitch you, and you said “so tell me a little bit about your company,” and the company said “well two weeks ago we were a sneaker company but we have since pivoted to AI,” you might say “huh, thanks but no thanks, we’re going to go with someone with a bit more AI experience and, you know, an actual data center.” Maybe that’s wrong; maybe the sneaker guys are great at AI. But you might worry.

But! If you said “so tell me a little bit about your company,” and the company said “well two weeks ago we were a sneaker company called Allbirds, but we have pivoted to AI,” your reaction might be different. Because, in this hypothetical, you run a big technology company, and you probably spent years wearing Allbirds. “I used to love Allbirds,” you might say; “high five!” And then you might sign a long-term cloud hosting agreement with Former Allbirds, because like many tech executives you have a nostalgic fondness for their brand.