Adidas said on Wednesday that it has donated or is planning to give away more than $150 million to groups fighting antisemitism and other forms of hate from the sales of Yeezy shoes, which were designed in cooperation with rapper Kanye West, The Associated Press reported.
Adidas cut ties with West in October of 2022 after he made a series of antisemitic outbursts. The German sportswear brand had $1.3 billion worth of the popular Yeezy sneakers piled up in warehouses after it broke off its partnership with West.
Adidas decided to sell some of the remaining shoes in batches, with two releases last year and another that launched late last month, and donate a portion of the proceeds to anti-hate groups.
The company has made donations to the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, run by social justice advocate Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.
Of the 300 million-euro profit it earned from the sales of Yeezy shoes last year, the company said it had given away or planned to donate over about $152 million, according to AP.
Adidas cut ties with the West after he caused outrage for saying during an interview that the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain were signed because former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law, wanted to "make money" from the deal.
He later threatened to go "death con 3 on the Jews" in an apparent antisemitic Twitter rant. West followed this up by claiming that he can't be antisemitic "because black people are actually Jew."
Other companies also cut ties with West in wake of the comments, including the Creative Artists Agency, Foot Locker and Apple Music.
This past September, Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden said in a podcast he doubted that West “meant what he said” when he made the antisemitic remarks.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt later said that Gulden had apologized for those comments.
West has since seemingly backtracked his antisemitic comments, citing actor Jonah Hill’s acting in the 2012 movie “21 Jump Street”.
This past December, the rapper published a Hebrew-language post on Instagram in which he apologized to the Jewish community for the various antisemitic statements he had made.