44 points by tcp_handshaker 11 hours ago | 18 comments
- 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.
- It honestly seems worse.
- 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?
- The market in general has gone completely off the rails
- 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.
- It's already listed, so they can get retail gamblers to buy in on day one.
- 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.
- 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!
- Sounds like we've almost reached the peak of this particular bubble.
Good riddance.
- You’re getting downvoted by salty paper millionaires
- 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
- [dead]