在Smartbird为大型语言模型提供动力之前，它正在做鞋。AI基础设施公司Nadia Carlsten的首席执行官周四与Business Insider首席通讯记者Ben Bergman谈到了这段转型历程，话题是Business Insider的《The Long Play》。公司的根基是一家可持续运动鞋公司Allbirds，该公司在2010年代末声名鹊起。鞋类产品尤其受到硅谷人群的追捧。
Before Smartbird was powering large language models, it was making shoes. The CEO of the AI infrastructure company, Nadia Carlsten, spoke about the transition with chief correspondent Ben Bergman on Thursday at Business Insider's The Long Play. Its roots are the sustainable sneaker company Allbirds, which skyrocketed in the late 2010s. The shoes were particularly popular among the Silicon Valley crowd.
Allbirds于2021年上市，随后市场对许多直接面向消费者的企业进行了“去库存化”，股价迅速下跌，并于今年3月以3900万美元的价格出售给美国交易所集团。“鞋业务并没有做得那么好，”Carlsten说。此后，公司将鞋类业务剥离，大部分员工离职，重新更名为Smartbird。AI转型使股价飙升，一度上涨800%，但随后回落。
Allbirds went public in 2021 before the market turned on many direct-to-consumer businesses. The stock quickly fell, and it sold to American Exchange Group in March for $39 million. "The short answer is the shoe business wasn't doing that well," Carlsten said. The company then sold off its footwear business and shed most of its workforce, rebranding as Smartbird. The AI pivot skyrocketed the stock and was briefly up 800%, though it has since come back down.
Carlsten于6月接任CEO，她从未穿过那些羊毛鞋。“公司的目标是做一些有价值、有意义的事情。对我来说，我知道自己想做AI基础设施，”她说。在考察新兴的AI基础设施行业后，她相信公司的转型让她在“正确的时间、正确的地点”加入这家公司。在她接手后的五个月内，Carlsten表示这段经历可以用一个词来概括：令人兴奋。
Carlsten, who became CEO in June, said she had never worn those wool shoes. "The goal of the company was to do something valuable and meaningful. And for me, I knew I wanted to do AI infrastructure," she said. After looking at the emerging AI infrastructure sector, she believed with the company's transformation, it was the "right place at the right time" for her to join. In the five months since she took over, Carlsten said the experience can be described in one word: exciting.
“我从未想过我会成为一家前鞋类公司的CEO，并管理本质上是一家初创企业的东西。”自接手该职位以来，她专注于组建新团队、寻找新技术供公司研究，以及打造新的客户管线。尽管股价在最初的转型驱动飙升后有所回落，Carlsten并不后悔接手这一挑战。她押注公司的长期潜力。“股市会按股市自己的方式行事，”她说。
"Never in my life thought that I would be the CEO of a former shoe company and managing what is essentially a startup." Since taking on the role, she has focused on building out a new team, scouring new technologies for the company to look into, and producing a new pipeline of customers. While the stock price has gone down since the initial pivot-induced spike, Carlsten does not regret taking on the challenge. She is betting on the company's long-term potential. "The stock market is going to do what the stock market does," she said.
“我关心的是确保我们让公司走上正轨，并且能够足够快、足够好地建设它，从而拥有一个投资者会喜爱的可持续业务。所以短期发生什么？没那么重要。长期发生什么才非常重要。”当被问及为何公司决定在公众视野中重塑自我，而不是作为一家私营初创公司起步时，卡尔斯滕反问：“为什么不呢？”她说，“它会回升的。”
"What I care about is making sure that we're putting the company on the right path, and that we're able to build it quickly enough and well enough that we have a sustainable business that investors will love. So what happens in the short term? Not that important. What happens in the long term is very important." When asked why the company decided to reinvent itself in the public eye instead of beginning as a private start-up, Carlsten countered with a question: "Why not?" she said, "It will come back up."
她说，从零开始重塑公司可能充满挑战，且公众的关注显而易见。然而，卡尔斯滕表示，重塑对公司而言是不可避免的。“这是一次非常公开的公司重塑，人们都在关注，”她说，“我认为每家公司都需要不时地重塑自我。”当被问及为何公司完全远程办公时，卡尔斯滕表示，Smartbird 的大部分工作是在虚拟环境或数据中心完成的，因此办公室用处不大。
Having to reinvent the company from scratch can be challenging, and the public's presence is clear, she said. Yet, Carlsten said reinvention is inevitable for companies. "This is a very public reinvention of the company, and people are watching," she said. "I think every company needs to reinvent itself every now and then." When asked why the company is fully remote, Carlsten said most of the work at Smartbird is done virtually or at data centers, meaning an office would not be of much use.
“我们花大量时间真正在构建东西，这我其实很喜欢。所以如果我的员工坐在办公室里，那就说明出问题了，”她说。卡尔斯滕表示，尽管竞争对手也在构建类似的 AI 基础设施，但 Smartbird 的做法是独特的。“对我们而言，关键在于为正确的公司在正确的时间提供正确的基础设施，”她说，“我们的商业模式让我们能更紧密地与客户合作，但也少得多地依赖资本密集型投入。”
"We spend a lot of time actually building things, which I actually love. So if my people are sitting in an office, something's wrong," she said. Carlsten said that although her competitors are building similar AI infrastructure, the way Smartbird is going about it is unique. "For us, it's about the right infrastructure for the right company at the right time," she said. "Our business model allows us to work more closely with customers, but it also is a lot less capital intensive."
她说，Smartbird 正寻求与那些尚未探索在其系统中实施 AI 的公司合作。随着更多科技领域之外的公司寻求在业务中采用 AI，它们面临自建基础设施或外包的选择，而 Smartbird 想要成为为它们做这件事的那家公司。“我们来做基础设施部分。让你们专注于实际业务，”她说。
Smartbird is looking to work with companies that have yet to explore implementing AI in their systems, she said. As more companies outside the tech realm look to adopt AI into their businesses, they have the choice to build infrastructure themselves or outsource it, and Smartbird wants to be the one to do it for them, she said. "We'll do the infrastructure part. We'll let you focus on the actual business," she said.
卡尔斯滕表示，她在业界遇到的最常见误解是认为一切都关乎 GPU。她说，公司做的远不止运行 GPU。“真正关键在于拥有一套客户可用于开展 AI 的整体系统，”她说。另一个在科技公司讨论中甚嚣尘上的议题是是否存在 AI 泡沫，以及它是否会破裂。卡尔斯滕表示，这取决于人们如何定义泡沫。她说，行业的热度意味着资金可能会流入未来未必能繁荣的公司，但这是新技术出现时都会发生的现象。
The most common misconception Carlsten said she has encountered in the business is that it's all about GPUs. She said the company does a lot more than just run GPUs. "It's really about having a holistic system that a customer can use to do AI," she said. Another rumbling that's taken over the tech company discourse is whether there's an AI bubble and if it will pop. Carlsten said that depends on how people go about defining the bubble. Excitement in the sector means funding might be going into companies that may not prosper in the future, but this is something that happens with the arrival of new technologies, she said.
“每当出现变革性技术，这种情况就会发生，”她说。“即使我们假设存在泡沫，也不代表这项技术不好。也不代表这项技术的采用会消失。”
"Every time there is a transformational technology, this happens," she said. "Even if we assume that there is a bubble, that doesn't mean that the technology is not good. It also doesn't mean that the adoption of the technology is going to go away."