Allbird's founders just played everyone
Plus: an update on the Tether Empire
Happy Monday! Let’s recap the most important crypto news from last week.
On today’s menu:
Allbirds just pivoted from shoes to AI. Why?
Tether launches a wallet
Today’s Big Stories:
They’ve sold their sole
There comes a time during every market cycle where everyone collectively goes “huh?” and the alarm bells for “BUBBLE” start ringing louder.
This might be it.
No, you’re not reading this next part wrong: a shoe company has done a full pivot to AI infrastructure.
You probably have many questions, like: why would they do that? Can they make it work? Is this bubble behavior?
Let’s break it all down real quick.
What is Allbirds?
Founded in 2015, Allbirds sold wool sneakers with a focus on minimalist designs and sustainable practices.
The shoes got popular with tech bros in Silicon Valley, and from there, they took off.
Allbirds went on a generational run; they reached a peak valuation of $4 billion, went public in 2021, and were even worn by Barrack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio.
But then it all came crashing down. Declining sales and increased competition squeezed Allbirds into all sorts of trouble, including getting sued by its shareholders.
The stock never recovered since.
And after 4 years of struggling, the company recently announced it would be pivoting to AI.
What’s their AI plan?
On 30 March this year, Allbirds sold its shoe IP and remaining assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million, raised $50 million in convertible financing, and plans to sell GPU-as-a-service.
In plain English: they’ll buy compute (graphics cards) to rent them to AI startups to train their models.
Will it work?
This isn’t the first time that a company has fully changed their business to match the latest trends.
A short look into history:
Zapata (1998): Oil manufacturer that pivoted to become an online internal portal. Fell into irrelevance.
Long Island Iced Tea (2017): Beverage company that pivoted to investing and acquiring businesses with blockchain technology. Was delisted from the NASDAQ in 2021.
Microstrategy (2020): Enterprise software company that started buying Bitcoin for its treasury. Stock is up ~10x six years later and is a key player in the BTC space.
So it usually doesn’t work out, but maybe it might, who knows?
Also, they haven’t laid out a plan to get these GPUs: isn’t Nvidia fully backed up with orders until 2028? So if they’re not going to get the best-in-class GPUs, are they really going to compete?
The AI bubble
Yes, this does scream bubble behavior, and we should be on guard for what’s going to happen next.
With all that said, the Allbirds’ founders aren’t dumb.
They’re rational players in an irrational system.
Think about it: AI is the hottest thing in the market. AI companies are attracting attention and capital left and right.
If your company is on the brink of death, wouldn’t you pull out all the stops to keep it running just a little more?
Besides, instead of them winding down Allbirds and starting out fresh with a new unknown company, the founders got all the major media outlets and reaction Youtubers talking about their new AI company for free — without spending a dollar on marketing — getting clowned was the point.
If you were an AI startup that needed compute, now you know where to go.
Maybe they’re the geniuses here.
Tether launches a wallet
We’ve been covering Tether on the newsletter recently: last week we discussed why Tether was building a search engine (read it here).
I’m a huge fan of their main product: USDT.
But they’ve been making lots of bets recently: besides launching a search engine, they started a data platform (QVAC), invested in Eight Sleep, and has even been buying up random bodegas across the world.
All of this to expand the Tether empire.
Now, they’ve launched tether.wallet – a self-custodial wallet that puts its entire global financial infrastructure directly in users’ hands for the first time.
The kicker? This wallet doesn’t deal with altcoins or NFTs.
It mainly supports 4 assets: Bitcoin, USDT, USAT (its GENIUS-compliant stablecoin), and XAUT (tokenized gold).
Some other features:
Networks supported: Lightning (BTC), Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Plasma
Send funds using a human-readable address like name@tether.me instead of a long wallet string
No gas token: pay transaction fees in whatever asset you’re sending
The wallet alone isn’t a game changer; there’s nothing notable here.
However, in the grand scheme, it makes perfect sense and is going to be a critical part of Tether’s masterplan.
To lay it out simply: Tether is aiming to build an operating system for the unbanked world: 1.4 billion people remain unbanked, and so many others are already Tether users.
People who need services like on-device AI (QVAC), peer-to-peer messaging (Keet), and now a wallet, will all need USDT.
Every USDT that’s minted → higher net interest income → pure profits in Tether’s pocket.
It’s too bad we can’t bet on Tether. But it’s so interesting to follow their trajectory and what happens next. Stay tuned.
In other news
Plasma One, Plasma’s Stablecoin Neobank and Card, is coming in June 2026 (Plasma)
Totalis Raises $500K from Y Combinator Entirely in USDC (Totalis)
StarkWare Cuts Staff, Reorganizes Into Two Units As it Targets Revenue (Eli Ben Sasson)
x402 Protocol Introduces ‘Upto’ Parameter to Enable Pre-Authorized Agentic Payments (Brian Armstrong)
Lobstercash Partners with Mastercard to Enable AI Agent Payments (Crossmint)
honestly getting clowned for free press might actually be the smartest move allbirds has made in years.
thanks!
as always, great stuff fam.
I really enjoyed it!