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These Allbirds AI jokes are as fire as the company’s stock price

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Once in a while, something happens in tech land that’s prime meme fodder. The latest: A shoe company suddenly — and seemingly inexplicably — pivots to go all in on AI.

Allbirds found itself the subject of many jokes on social media on Wednesday. Investors in the long-beleaguered company, though, had something to celebrate. Its stock price shot through the roof after it rebranded itself as NewBird AI and said it would provide GPU compute-as-a-service.

Have a look at some of these top-tier comedy offerings:

#1 As Ross Geller once yelled in a legendary ‘Friends’ episode: ‘PIVOT!’

#2 Someone’s going shopping

#3 Enter ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ memes

#4 Ouch

#5 Well, what if?

Allbirds, founded in 2015, quickly rose to fame for its wool sneaker, becoming a Silicon Valley tech bro favorite. Former President Barack Obama was spotted wearing a pair in 2020.

It was a Wall Street darling as well. During the company’s trading debut in 2021, its valuation reached $4 billion.

But things started crashing after 2022, when the shoe lost its shine. In 2023, Allbirds posted an annual loss of $101 million, and its shares plummeted 47%.

In the years since, it launched products that flopped, laid off staff, and went through a management shake-up, none of which helped turn things around.

In March, Allbirds announced that American Exchange Group, a New York-based fashion and consumer company, would buy it for $39 million.

After Wednesday’s AI pivot, its shares rose by about 582%. There was a slight correction in after-hours trading, when the price dropped 28%.




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A recording of CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote was posted on Salesforce’s internal site. His jokes about ICE weren’t included.

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  • Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made jokes about ICE during a keynote at an employee event.
  • The company posted a recording of the keynote without Benioff’s ICE remarks.
  • The comments drew criticism from many employees, including executives.

A recording of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote this week was posted on the company’s internal site, and his jokes about Immigration and Customs Enforcement weren’t included, according to internal messages and an excerpt of the video viewed by Business Insider.

“The recording of Marc’s CKO keynote is posted,” one employee wrote in a message on the company’s internal Slack, referring to the “Company Kickoff” event for employees. “Anyone going to watch it to see the ICE ‘jokes’ will discover they have been edited out of the recording.”

An excerpt of the recording viewed by Business Insider appears to show a jump cut during the introduction of Benioff’s speech, where the frame switches to a view of the audience, and then Benioff appears on the opposite side of the stage.

Several employees who heard the remarks told Business Insider that Benioff asked people in the audience to stand if they came from outside the US, and then apparently joked that ICE agents were in the back room. Benioff also complained about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, the people said.

Salesforce hasn’t responded to multiple requests about Benioff’s comments and did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Salesforce executives, including Slack’s new general manager, addressed Benioff’s jokes. Slack general manager Rob Seaman wrote in an internal Slack message viewed by Business Insider: “I cannot defend or explain them. They do not align with my personal values and I know this to be the case for many of you as well.”

Some Salesforce employees said they received an email asking them to explain their absence from the event following Benioff’s remarks.

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Slack’s new head just denounced Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s ICE jokes in internal messages

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Salesforce executives, including Slack’s new general manager, addressed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s jokes about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to internal messages.

Benioff angered some employees with the comments on Tuesday, including one about ICE surveilling employees’ travel.

“I want to acknowledge the jokes that happened this morning at CKO,” Slack general manager Rob Seaman wrote in an internal Slack message viewed by Business Insider. “I cannot defend or explain them. They do not align with my personal values and I know this to be the case for many of you as well.

Salesforce has yet to respond to repeated requests about Benioff’s comments and did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

“I assume there will be a statement that addresses them,” Seaman wrote. “If there isn’t, I’ll talk about it in the next all Slack call, and then I hope we can highlight what was actually super positive from the morning – real, authentic acknowledgment of the work that you’ve all done and the importance of Slack right now.

Salesforce recently promoted Seaman to executive vice president and general manager of Slack, following Slack CEO Denise Dresser’s departure in December to become OpenAI’s chief revenue officer. The company also promoted Joe Inzerillo, its previous chief digital officer, to president of enterprise and AI technology, overseeing both Slack and Agentforce.

Craig Broscow, a VP, also addressed Benioff’s comments on Slack, calling on Benioff to publicly respond.

“Marc has so much valuable insight to share on the Agentic Transformation,” Broscow wrote in a message viewed by Business Insider. “And the quarter was so strong. Everyone’s excited to be here. Most of us love our work and appreciate the privilege of working here. But for the senior leaders who I’m sure follow this thread to engage employee sentiment: this is overshadowing everything else and for everyone who has the courage to post there are 100+ people in Vegas who share their deep disappointment. It would be a step in the right direction and for Marc to acknowledge as soon as possible – ideally publicly – that his attempted joke was extremely upsetting to large segments of his employee base.”

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