Raspberry Pi to become a public company

The makers of the Raspberry Pi have filed documents with the London Stock Exchange saying that the tiny hobbyist computers will soon be sold by a publicly traded company, Raspberry Pi Limited.

The filing, published May 15, said that the Pi has developed a “strong track record of revenue growth and profitability,” having pulled in $266 million in revenue over the course of 2023. Its products are sold in 70 different countries, and Raspberry Pi has partnered up with numerous major technology companies, including Sony and Arm.

Since 2021, Raspberry Pi has been part of the semiconductor market, as well, having launched the RP2040 microcontroller in that year. The company also boasts an extensive sales channel, with more than 100 resellers, as well as licensing arrangements with manufacturer Premier Farnell.

The Raspberry Pi debuted in 2012 as a general-use computing module designed to fit into everything from home hobbyist projects like DIY home automation to coding education. It was the brainchild of Eben Upton, an academic at the University of Cambridge and computer scientist, who conceived of the Pi as a way to help democratize access to computers for educational purposes.

Since then, the Pi has found its way into a dizzying array of projects, both home-brewed and commercial, with 61 million units sold as of this February. In 2023, the company’s filing said, 72% of its sales went to the industrial and embedded market, an illustration of Raspberry Pi’s importance to the world of IoT.

The Pi’s use in IoT has seen it used to power devices used to detect flu-like symptoms in crowds to monitor for COVID-19, as an industrial modem and router, and as a network monitoring node.

Rumors of an IPO had circulated since January, according to a report from Tom’s Hardware, which said that the company – which is still overseen by the nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation – had retained investment banks Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for a public offering (later confirmed by Upton), valuing the company at roughly $560 million.

Upton said in the filing that the commercial and industrial uses of the Raspberry Pi have become a success, spurred by an ecosystem of individuals and businesses: “We’re now seeing the former feed into the latter, as the first generation who encountered Raspberry Pi as young people take their experience with our technology into their professional careers.”

The University of Cambridge, at the Pi’s tenth anniversary in 2022, said that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has helped to support more than 26,000 teachers in the UK through the provision of certification and development programs, and that the Pi is the best-selling computer to come out of the UK.