You may soon be greeted by a chart when searching for the stock of Raspberry Pi boards simply because Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc is now a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) under the ticker RPI.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded in 2008 as a non-profit organization with Eben and Liz Upton (and others) taking a gamble manufacturing a few thousand Raspberry Pi model B boards for $35 apiece for the February 2012 launch. But things got quickly out of hand, and the unexpected success of the board meant Raspberry Pi Trading (then changed to Raspberry Pi Limited) for-profit had to be established to handle sales and retribute most of the profits to the non-profit entity. After having sold over 60 million Raspberry Pi boards, Raspberry Pi Limited is no more, following the listing of Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc.
Since the company is now public, there’s an investor section on the Raspberry Pi website with more details about the finances and forward statements from the company. We learn the company had 266 million dollars in sales in the financial year 2023 and 66 million dollars in profits. Since the inception of the company, $50 million has been distributed to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The Raspberry Pi IPO will raise funds to help the company build more Raspberry Pi products and increase the reach of the products. We’re assured this will not change the Raspberry Pi’s mission of delivering low-cost computer boards and furthering IT education. It’s just profits will now be shared with shareholders including the Raspberry Pi Foundation which remains a major shareholder of Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc after the IPO. The IPO price was 280 pence, and the Raspberry Pi stock is now quoting at around 370 pence.
Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc CEO, and Philip Colligan, Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO discussed what the IPO means for both companies in the video embedded below.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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They slowly revealing the true ugly face of them ….
Indeed. The whole Raspberry Pi Foundations site is still registered as a charitable entity, with supposed focus on young people.
It became a corporate machine based on profit a while back and it is disgusting to see it retain this charity status after going public.
What’s disgusting is that you didn’t know it had split into Raspberry Pi Foundation and Raspberry Pi Trading, but by all means continue to get the facts wrong because clearly nobody cares.
“what the IPO means for both companies”
It means that they will become just cash cows, there won’t be any semblance of “public service” left in them. Rpis are already not so good for home tinkerers, now they will pivot to industry even more.