Smartbird, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIRD), formerly known as Allbirds, Inc., has appointed Nadia Carlsten as president and chief executive officer, effective June 17, 2026. Carlsten also joins the company's board of directors, replacing Joe Vernachio, who is resigning from both roles.

The company has completed the sale of the Allbirds brand and footwear assets, as previously announced, and has formally changed its name to Smartbird. The ticker symbol "BIRD" on the Nasdaq Global Select Market remains unchanged.

Alongside the leadership transition, Smartbird expanded its convertible financing facility from $50 million to $100 million. Lily Yan Hughes, who has served as an independent director since October 2025, has been appointed board chair. Annie Mitchell continues as chief financial officer, a role she has held for three years.

Carlsten previously served as CEO of DCAI, where she launched a sovereign AI supercomputer in partnership with Nvidia. She has also held roles at Google spin-off SandboxAQ as vice president of product, and at Amazon Web Services, where she launched Amazon's quantum computing service. She holds bachelor's degrees in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

As part of her hiring, Carlsten received an inducement grant of 1,532,379 restricted stock units, with 255,397 shares vesting immediately and the remainder vesting in 16 equal quarterly installments.

Smartbird describes itself as an AI infrastructure provider offering dedicated AI compute as a managed service. The company said it is in active discussions with prospective customers and is designing its first cluster deployments.