When Liza Moiseeva first heard that Allbirds was pivoting to AI, she thought it was satire.

“It belongs in an Onion article,” says Moiseeva, chief marketing officer at Commons, an app that helps people shop more sustainably, in part by rating brands. 

Moiseeva has worked in sustainability for about 15 years, and she’s been an Allbirds customer for more than a decade. Her family owns 10 pairs of the sneaker that once ruled Silicon Valley streets—and that had been a leader in sustainable fashion.

Now, Allbirds is stepping away from its footwear business, pivoting instead to AI compute infrastructure and rebranding as “NewBird AI.” (The Allbirds brand and footwear assets are being sold to American Exchange Group.)

As part of that pivot, the original Allbirds company is also abandoning its previous focus on environmentalism, which doesn’t seem compatible with a focus on AI.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the company wrote that its stockholders are being asked to approve a charter amendment “to remove references to the Company being operated for the environmental conservation public benefit.” 

The company intends to continue trading on the Nasdaq. Fast Company reached out to Allbirds for comment.

Sustainable fashion goes out of style

To customers like Moiseeva, that feels like a sharp turn away from the company’s beginnings.

“It was a poster child for sustainable brands,” she says of the company. Its environmental mission is what drew her to become a customer (“They’re also super practical and comfortable,” she adds.) 

Though she doesn’t agree with the pivot, Moiseeva does see it as part of a broader move away from environmentalism—particularly under the Trump administration, which has dismantled federal climate policies and seemingly made the larger conversation about climate action (especially from businesses) a bit of a taboo.

“In the socio-political environment right now, the word ‘sustainability’ is kind of becoming a bad word,” Moiseeva says. 

To her, it’s a misstep for companies to move away from such efforts. “At the end of it, we still need a planet to live on,” she says. “If we all make these short-sighted decisions, we’re just gonna burn the world a little quicker.”

Allbirds isn’t the first sustainability-focused company to peter out. (After being valued at $4 billion just a few years ago, the company sold its assets for just $39 million last month.)

Parade, the underwear brand focused on recycled, eco-friendly materials, shut down in October 2025. Nisolo, a shoe brand that touted sustainability efforts, went into foreclosure in January 2025. Paravel, which used recycled materials (including water bottles) to make luggage, filed for bankruptcy in May 2025.

All were also certified B Corps. And that’s just retail; a variety of clean tech startups have also struggled lately.

With each one of these, it means one less sustainably minded choice for consumers. In the Commons app, Allbirds was once a top-rated sustainable brand. Now, the app notes that “this brand is undergoing significant transformation, and we are temporarily suspending its rating while we learn more.”

VC funding once praised Allbirds’ environmentalism

Allbirds’ original sustainably focused mission is also what attracted early investors, like Maveron, the VC firm that led the company’s $7.25 million Series A in 2016.

On the day Allbirds went public in 2021, a Maveron blog post reflected on the company’s journey, and lauded its sustainability efforts and “strong brand ethos.” 

“Allbirds has always been committed to making better things in a better way,” the post read. “As a B Corp focused on sustainability, they’re trying to combat climate change and bring sustainability to the forefront. We’ve been so moved by their commitment to B Corp values that we became one ourselves.”

It’s not clear how Maveron feels about the pivot; the firm could not be reached for comment. Maveron is among the largest shareholders in Allbirds. The meeting during which stockholders will vote on Allbirds’ amendment to remove environmental references is scheduled for May 18.

The day Allbirds announced the move, though, its stock saw a 592% gain.

To some, that’s more a sign of the hype around AI—and the manic urge that people and companies feel to not miss out on that tech—than any actual marker of the business’s potential future success. 

Business ownership and a changing market

Though the Allbirds brand will live on through American Exchange Group, its environmental efforts won’t. 

American Exchange Group, as Jennifer Wilkins, a writer specializing in post growth economics, noted on LinkedIn, is not a public benefit corporation. Allbirds’ sustainability mission, then, “is no longer a governing constraint embedded in corporate structure.”

To Wilkins, the pivot highlights the limits of the public benefit corporation model, which “does not lock in a specific business model or prevent asset sales,” she writes. “It does not guarantee continuity of mission.”

Also at play is the fact that Allbirds relied on venture capital, and then became a publicly traded company, exposed to the whims of the market. Contrast that with Patagonia—which has never received VC funding and is not public, and has been able to hold onto, and even further cement, its environmental mission. 

“The Allbirds case demonstrates that business sustainability isn’t only about low-carbon production,” Wilkins writes. “It’s also about how business ownership behaves under changing capital conditions.”

Allbirds likely won’t be the last sustainability company to fold or move away from its environmental ethos. 

But no matter how many companies do so, Moiseeva says she still believes in the model. 

“I still will believe that businesses should exist for the purpose of not just making money, but actually doing good in the world,” she says. “Real good, not ‘greenwashing’ good.”