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Apr 20, 2026
Wait, Allbirds is an AI Company?
Wait, Allbirds is an AI Company?
00:00
13:12
Transcript
0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Viro Podcast. Every week, we dig into what's really happening where climate crashes into culture, politics, and the world you actually live in. The stuff that matters, told straight.
0:17
This is Viro. Let's go. Okay. Welcome back. Episode two. We made it. We did. And look, we said last week that AI is scaling faster than the systems that power it. This week handed us the perfect case study.
0:35
Like the universe just said, "Here you go. Here's your story." [chuckles] We have a lot to get into. Let's go. Okay, first story, and I need you to stay with me because this one sounds made up.
0:47
Allbirds, the eco-friendly shoe company, the one founded on sustainability, natural materials, no plastics, no petroleum. The shoe that every tech bro in San Francisco was wearing in twenty nineteen.
0:59
Is now an AI data center company. [chuckles] They sold their entire shoe brand, the IP, the trademarks, the domain, the social media accounts, all of it. Thirty-nine million dollars, gone.
1:13
And they are rebranding as Newbird AI. Newbird AI. They kept the bird. And here's where it gets actually unhinged. The stock jumped six hundred percent the day they announced it. Six hundred.
1:27
A company that was worth twenty-one million dollars on Tuesday was worth over a hundred and twenty-seven million by Wednesday, just from adding AI to the name. Just from the name. This is giving Long Island Iced Tea.
1:42
You remember that. Two thousand seventeen, beverage company, struggling. Changes their name to Long Island Blockchain. Stock jumps two hundred and seventy-five percent overnight.
1:52
Gets delisted from Nasdaq the following year. Same energy, completely different decade. We never learn. But here's the part that actually matters for us. Allbirds wasn't just any company.
2:03
They were a certified benefit corporation, which means they were legally required to generate a positive impact on society and the environment. That was baked into their legal structure.
2:15
Their investors put money in specifically because of that commitment. Now they're pivoting to power AI data centers. Which are some of the most energy intensive facilities on the planet.
2:26
We're talking about buildings that run twenty-four/seven, consuming massive amounts of electricity. The opposite of what Allbirds stood for. The complete opposite.
2:37
And their investors who signed up for an eco-friendly shoe company are now shareholders in a GPU leasing operation without being asked, without a real choice.
2:46
The shareholder vote is May eighteenth, but at this point, the deal is basically done. Sounds like a fun meeting. [chuckles] And look, companies pivot. That's fine. Blockbuster should've pivoted. Kodak should've pivoted.
2:59
We get it. But there's a difference between pivoting and completely abandoning the thing people invested in on purpose.
3:06
Someone co-founded this company specifically to use renewable materials, natural wool, no petroleum products.
3:14
The whole brand identity was built around not doing damage, and now the shell of that company is going to lease GPUs to whoever needs compute capacity. For maximum profit.
3:26
And the wildest part, sales had dropped nearly fifty percent between twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-five, from almost three hundred million down to one fifty. So the shoes weren't working.
3:39
The sustainability brand wasn't saving them. And instead of doubling down or finding a buyer who would carry the mission forward, they looked at the AI gold rush and went. Yeah, that.
3:49
[chuckles] Which honestly tells you everything about where we are right now. The AI infrastructure demand is so insane that a struggling eco shoe company looked at the market and thought, "We could do that."
4:03
And Wall Street agreed. Six hundred percent in a day.
4:07
Money is flowing so fast into anything with AI attached to it that nobody is stopping to ask what it actually costs in energy, in emissions, in broken promises to the people who believed in the original mission.
4:21
Allbirds built something people loved because it stood for something. And the lesson the market just took from their collapse is just put AI in the name and the stock goes up. Newbird AI. Gone are the wool shoes.
4:36
Hello, server racks. We'll see how this one lands. A quick note for any brands listening. Wanna showcase your brand with us?
4:45
Partner with the Viro Podcast and your marketing dollars go directly toward funding renewable energy and climate projects. Simple as that. Link in the show notes.
4:57
Okay, we need to talk about a billionaire, and not in the way we usually talk about billionaires. Tom Steyer, climate activist, NYT bestselling author, and now running for governor of California.
5:09
And before you go, "Oh, great, another billionaire politician..." We actually like this guy. This guy has been putting his money where his mouth is on climate for over a decade.
5:19
We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. He founded NextGen America in twenty thirteen specifically to mobilize young voters around climate policy.
5:28
He signed The Giving Pledge, the Bill Gates/Warren Buffett thing where billionaires commit to giving away at least half their fortune. He did that in twenty ten.
5:37
He wrote a book called Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War. It hit the New York Times bestseller list. A billionaire wrote a climate book and people actually bought it.
5:49
And his whole thesis is actually really compelling.
5:53
He believes clean energy isn't just good for the planet, it's the path to affordability, lower energy bills, less dependence on utility monopolies, less exposure to oil price spikes.
6:04
He's connecting the climate argument directly to the cost of living argument in a way that most politicians completely miss.
6:12
And that is the argument that actually wins people over, by the way.You stop talking about polar bears and start talking about electricity bills, and suddenly a lot more people are paying attention.
6:23
Which is why he's running for Governor of California on a platform of breaking up utility monopolies and lowering electric bills by twenty-five percent, making corporations pay their fair share, biggest affordable housing push in state history, and putting climate at the center of all of it.
6:42
And look, California is the fifth largest economy in the world. What happens there on climate and energy policy ripples out everywhere.
6:51
A governor who actually understands this stuff and has spent fifteen years fighting for it, that matters.
6:58
He's also publicly condemned the oil and gas industry for years, not quietly, loudly, with his own money backing it up. He funded ballot measures targeting oil companies.
7:09
He's been in these fights when it was expensive and unpopular to be there. Compare that to basically every other billionaire in the news right now.
7:18
[laughs] Like we just spent a whole segment on Allbirds abandoning their environmental mission the second the AI money showed up, and here's Tom Steyer going the completely opposite direction.
7:28
More money, more commitment, running for office to actually change the system from the inside.
7:34
And his campaign slogan is essentially, "California is too expensive, and the same politicians who got us here can't fix it," which, yeah, he's not wrong. The race is wide open.
7:46
A UC Berkeley poll had over a third of voters still undecided.
7:50
He's got name recognition from his twenty twenty presidential run, he has the resources to stay in it, and he has fifteen years of actual climate credibility that nobody else in that race can match.
8:02
Here's what we keep coming back to, though. This is what it looks like when someone with real resources decides to actually use them for the thing they say they believe in. Not just a foundation, not just a pledge.
8:16
Running for office, putting yourself out there, taking on utility monopolies and oil companies and corporate interests with your own name on the ballot. Why can't more billionaires be like this guy? Genuinely asking.
8:29
Tom Steyer, climate billionaire. We're rooting for you. [upbeat music] A quick note for any brands listening. Wanna showcase your brand with us?
8:38
Partner with the Viro Podcast, and your marketing dollars go directly toward funding renewable energy and climate projects. Simple as that. Link in the show notes.
8:51
Okay, this next one is quick, but it's actually one of our favorites because it's so unexpected.
8:57
Texas, the state that runs on oil, the state that literally has the word gas in its identity, has a real-time public dashboard showing exactly how its grid is powered every fifteen minutes, updated live.
9:10
And it is not what you'd expect. So here's how a typical Texas day looks on that dashboard. Morning comes up, solar starts climbing. By noon, solar farms are pumping out an average of twenty-four gigawatts.
9:23
That's double what they were producing just two years ago. Double. In two years. Wind is doing its thing whenever it can. And gas, yes, gas is still there, filling the gaps, keeping the lights on overnight.
9:38
But here's the number that tells the whole story. Wind and solar together supplied thirty-six percent of Texas's total electricity last year. Thirty-six percent. In Texas.
9:51
And gas, which used to be fifty percent of the midday mix, is now down to thirty-seven percent at peak solar hours. It's being pushed out, not by policy, not by a mandate, by economics and capacity.
10:04
And then there's batteries. Texas has added over fourteen gigawatts of battery storage since twenty twenty-one.
10:10
So when the sun goes down and solar drops off, batteries kick in around eight PM and supply about four gigawatts right at the evening peak. The grid literally hands off from solar to batteries to gas like a relay race.
10:25
And you know what happened when a major winter storm hit Texas earlier this year? The grid held. Because gas was weatherized after the two thousand twenty-one disaster. Wind turbines stayed online.
10:36
Batteries surged in the critical windows. The whole diverse mix absorbed the shock. One energy expert put it really simply: grid reliability doesn't come from one technology winning.
10:48
It comes from all of them covering each other's weaknesses. Which is exactly what the anti-renewable crowd refuses to admit. Because Texas is not doing this because of some Green New Deal.
10:59
Texas is doing this because it's cheap. Solar is the fastest and least expensive new power to build right now. Wind is abundant. And the demand in Texas is growing faster than any other grid in the country.
11:11
Fourteen percent projected growth in twenty twenty-six alone. Data centers, AI infrastructure, manufacturing, all of it landing in Texas and needing power right now. And the only way to meet that demand is renewables.
11:26
Full stop. You cannot build gas plants fast enough. You cannot permit nuclear fast enough. Solar and wind are the only things that can scale at the speed this growth requires.
11:38
So the next time someone tells you the energy transition is some coastal liberal fantasy, send them the Texas ERCOT dashboard, updated every fifteen minutes in real time, showing exactly what's actually powering the Lone Star State.
11:55
Transition isn't coming. In Texas, it's already here. They just haven't updated the bumper stickers yet. Okay, before we get out of here, a couple things. First, you've been posting about Viro AI, and we see you. Tag us.
12:09
Seriously. We are featuring our community, and we wanna see how you're using it. Second, if you're still defaulting to ChatGPT for everything, try Viro instead. Same output, better outcome.
12:20
Every prompt funds clean energy and climate projects. It literally costs you nothing to make the switch.
12:26
And if you have thoughts on the show, stories you want us to cover, things we got wrong, things we got right, reply to the newsletter or email
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. We read everything. No, seriously, everything.
12:41
What you do matters. The fact that you're here listening to this means you give a care, and that matters more than you think. That is episode two. Eco shoes becoming data centers.
12:53
A climate billionaire running for governor. Texas quietly going green. Good week. Really good week for content, honestly. The world just keeps delivering. Catch us next week, same place, more heat. See you then.
13:07
[upbeat music]
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