This feels like the 2026 version of companies adding "blockchain" to their name in 2017 and watching the stock jump. The shoe business was real — they had a genuinely differentiated product with the merino wool. Pivoting from a physical product with brand recognition to "AI" when you have no obvious AI expertise or data moat is a tough sell beyond the initial hype pop.
Isn't this just a SPAC?
The shoe business was sold, a shell of a public company was left, and it essentially acquired a brand new company focused on AI.
That is probably still bad enough too. The SPAC era of 2020 and 2021 was not great [1] and SPACs are normally not the best vehicles [2]
[1]https://certuity.com/insights/what-happened-to-spacs/ [2]https://mergersandinquisitions.com/spac-vs-ipo/
That isn't how I read the article?
But then a company whose only asset is it has a listing should be able to go up by 580% doing not very much.
The announcement was that it secured $50M in financing, sold the shoes business for $39M leaving $20M or so in cash.
An empty public company with $70M in financing to enter a hyped market was valued at $115M. The stated intent is to spend their money on a CapEx item with a fairly high demand and resale value (GPUs) in a sector that has a pretty simple playbook.
The 580% bump is a fun headline, but "startup secures $50M in funding at a 5.8x valuation bump" isn't unheard of.
Have I invested? No. Is this a ridiculously funny narrative and story? Absolutely. Is it the most ridiculous valuation I've seen? No.
Yup, that's exactly what it is.
It honestly seems worse.
You can do something similar with any surplus kittens you need to rehome. Don't tell people they're friendly, don't scratch the furniture, are litterbox-trained, and get on well with children and other pets, just say they're quantum AI kittens and they'll practically fly out the door.
Incidentally, if anyone would like to buy a quantum AI Yugo, DM me.
Reminds me of Long Island Blockchain
Reminds me of dotcom era pets.com
Still waiting for pets.ai before calling the top
Exactly what I tought
Absolutely ridiculous. Their shoes business was going in the wrong direction - they started to offer plasticwear - and recently had to return a lot of merchandise as they didn't bother to put on the wool brand's website that their socks are mostly plastic. Their original hit was gone, replaced by lackluster versions. By the way, the shoes were made in South Korea.
I've been expecting- maybe just haven't seen- some coincidental divestment. As in, they knew what the effect would be, just looking to make a little money on a doomed venture.
Am I the only one who couldn't tell whether this was real or not for a good long while? I legitimately wondered whether the BBC site might have been hacked. I just simply cannot find a way to make sense of just about anything in the news story; I had just assumed it would go under and that's that. Why would someone who has that kind of money to invest put it into this pivot as opposed to a completely fresh, new effort? What's the efficiency I'm not seeing?
Me too. It had me genuinely wondering if the Brits have their own version of April Fools in the middle of the month.
Forget the AI -- I'm just as shocked to see that shares went from $500+ in 2021 to below $3 this year. That's insane. I had to verify it's actually real.
I thought this was just a normal shoe company that had invented a cool look with some good branding.
> I'm just as shocked to see that shares went from $500+ in 2021 to below $3 this year. That's insane. I had to verify it's actually real.
Well, sort of. They did a 20 for 1 reverse split in 2024, and possibly that wasn’t the only reverse split. That means the stock peaked at $25 (pre reverse split) and dipped below $0.25 (if the reverse split didn’t happen) so they did a reverse split to stay listed on the NYSE, as you need $1/share minimum price or something like that.
Number of shares and share price are completely arbitrary, FWIW.
Don't most stock charting websites backdate splits to show the price as it would be with current stock?
Yes, that's how you get a $500 historic price. It wasn't at 500 at the time, but due to the reverse split the current price is correct relative to a $500 historic price.
TBF the USians elected an April fools president...
But no, we have the same April fools as everyone else. But if it were a special April fools, I could fool you by telling you it isn't....
The market in general has gone completely off the rails
There's no efficiency. Markets are a casino where people with no domain knowledge and automated systems make bets.
If people stop betting on your thing, it behooves you to rebrand it into whatever the magic beans of the moment are.
It's already listed, so they can get retail gamblers to buy in on day one.
This new season of HBO’s Silicon Valley is wild!
Not as funny as the original, but available everywhere, instead of just HBO.
They should go ahead and drop one the L's from their name and become ALBirds and further embrace the lunacy :-)
Then also make the second letter lowercase, to further bait the irrationally exuberant depending on font: "AlBird" versus "AIBird".
“AlBirds, they are in fact real [shoes]!”
Kodak moment!
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We are not at peak. More companies will follow claiming to be AI whatever. If like twenty or more followed, then we are close to peak
I blame W.H.F. Talbot