Call it the great Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain trade of 2026: Companies are jostling for an AI stock bump.
If you’re a flailing sneaker company like Allbirds, you issue a press release announcing you’re now in the GPU-leasing business. If you’re a blue-chip company with equity coverage, like Ford, you whisper to your analysts and let them do the work for you.
Shares in the Detroit automaker surged 14% Wednesday off the back of a Morgan Stanley note that pointed out Ford’s new energy-storage business, built on the back of the batteries that power its shrinking electric-car arm, could work for data centers, too. Investors have an insatiable appetite to fund the pick-and-shovel businesses underpinning data-center buildouts and Ford’s version of an AI pivot shows that even staid companies like the 122-year-old giant aren’t above the fray.
Backchanneling to stock analysts is, on the refinement scale, somewhere between Allbirds’ naked and evidence-proof pivot and more defensible AI plays, like toilet maker Toto highlighting the uses of its advanced ceramics in AI components.
