Shoes, Karaoke Machines and Action Cameras Find a Second Act in AI

Shoes, karaoke machines and action cameras have little in common. However, their makers have all found artificial intelligence as the same potential second act.

GoPro is the latest unlikely addition, following Allbirds, which sold its footwear business to pursue AI compute, and Singing Machine, which moved from karaoke machines into AI logistics.

GoPro agreed this week to merge with Starman Optical, a private maker of optical transceivers used inside AI data centers, in a deal that hands Starman a 90% stake in the combined company, CNBC reported Tuesday (Sept. 1).

The deal wipes out roughly $92 million of GoPro’s debt, according to a Tuesday press release. GoPro shareholders get $285 million in cash, keep about 10% of the company, and watch it pivot into AI infrastructure, defense, robotics and aerospace while GoPro keeps making cameras on the side.

“We expect this merger to enable GoPro to grow across consumer, commercial and defense markets as a leading American imaging and optical solutions company,” Founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said in the release.

Shares jumped more than 50% on the news, CNBC reported.

GoPro isn’t the first brand to try this trick. Allbirds sold its entire shoe business for $39 million in April, then relaunched as NewBird AI and promised to rent out AI computing power, CNBC reported separately April 15. The stock popped 582% the day of the announcement.

Since then, there’s been no confirmed public update on whether NewBird AI has actually acquired GPU hardware, signed a data center deal, or landed a single customer, the concrete steps the company itself said would come next.

One of These Pivots Has Already Curdled

Singing Machine shows how this story can end. The karaoke machine maker rebranded as Algorhythm Holdings and said in February it had built AI logistics technology, The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 12. The stock surged 30% overnight to $1.08.

Seven months later, it’s down more than 75% to 25 cents.

The lesson is simple. A stock pop on pivot day measures excitement, not whether the company can compete against players spending real money on AI.

Consider CoreWeave, a company that has defined the GPU cloud category. In August, CoreWeave guided its 2026 capital spending to between $35 billion and $39 billion, up from an earlier $31 billion to $35 billion range, CNBC reported Aug. 11.

Allbirds raised $50 million total for its pivot, and a single high-end Nvidia chip alone can cost $30,000 to $40,000. That means the funding buys a modest cluster of GPUs, not the data center footprint and long-term contracts that actual GPU-as-a-Service providers need to compete, TheNextWeb reported April 17.

What Actually Makes GoPro’s Bet Different

GoPro’s version has one thing Allbirds and Singing Machine didn’t: an actual product already shipping. Starman’s transceivers debuted at an industry conference in March and are built for hardware from Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom that AI data centers already run, CineD reported Tuesday.

GoPro also brings more than 2,500 patents and a camera business that keeps running, unlike Allbirds, which sold off its actual product to fund the leap.

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