Raspberry Pi’s declare to fame is straightforward: it makes low cost, unassuming private computer systems. Oh, and so they’re additionally the dimensions of your bank card at greatest.
In case you have a look at considered one of their PCs, it appears like a mechanical, uncovered part of a laptop computer that you just’d in any other case take no real interest in.
However that’s precisely Raspberry Pi’s purpose—to show individuals about computing and coding. The Cambridge-based group, based 16 years in the past, is now gearing up for an IPO that’s set to offer the London Inventory Trade a much-needed enhance. Its shares have been priced at £2.80 ($3.56) apiece, fetching a market capitalization of about £542 million ($688 million).
The shares will begin buying and selling on June 14.
“In an ever-more-connected world, the marketplace for Raspberry Pi’s high-performance, low-cost computing platforms continues to increase,” Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton mentioned.
What’s Raspberry Pi anyway?
Raspberry Pi had a humble begin to life as a charity in Cambridge, the place a crew of engineers and laptop scientists got here collectively to create a PC distinctive from others.
It was made to “stand up to the tough and tumble of childhood,” because the College of Cambridge places it, and the corporate has now bought over 60 million PCs worldwide because it first went on sale in 2012.
Raspberry Pi’s secret sauce has 4 straightforward but important standards—the PCs have to be programmable, enjoyable, reasonably priced, and strong.
In the present day, the most affordable Raspberry Pi laptop prices simply $15.
Folks use Raspberry Pi to know programming and check {hardware} initiatives and different manufacturing unit equipment.
“As we recognised the potential for reasonably priced expertise to make a significant distinction, not simply in schooling however in numerous different contexts, the size of our ambition grew,” Upton informed the Monetary Occasions.
Within the final 12 years, Raspberry Pi has launched a number of fashions, with the income going in the direction of the eponymous basis—a shareholder with a 73% stake within the firm—to help youngsters’s schooling. The Raspberry Pi Basis additionally gives free sources and academic applications tailor-made to younger individuals.
The business firm’s income jumped 41% in 2023 to $266 million in comparison with a yr earlier, doubling income to $38 million.
A registration doc in November valued the corporate at practically $600 million, together with the brand new funds raised, simply as chipmaker Arm purchased a minority stake within the firm.
Chris Ratcliffe—Bloomberg/Getty Pictures
Raspberry Pi goes public
The ultra-niche laptop maker’s IPO has been within the works for a couple of months.
Among the many causes it’s being watched intently is the enhance it may deliver the London Inventory Trade, which has seen distinguished listings slip by regardless of being inside its grasp (together with Arm’s). Specifically, London has misplaced its attract within the tech world lately.
It’s not been a terrific search for LSE, which has seen some corporations wind down their listings simply as IPOs in different European markets have amped up—resembling Switzerland’s Galderma Group and Spain’s Puig magnificence group.
Certainly, Raspberry Pi may very well be a terrific poster baby for reasserting London’s attractiveness as a key European house of tech. The corporate has customers throughout totally different age teams and industries, it’s purpose-driven, and has generated important income because of the high quality of its merchandise.
“Strategically, Raspberry Pi’s itemizing is extremely essential as it might add a longtime, worthwhile expertise firm to the UK market,” Dan Ives, funding analyst at AJ Bell, mentioned in a observe final month.
“London is extraordinarily underweight tech corporations versus the US and something to handle this downside is a step in the proper path. In a best-case situation, if Raspberry Pi’s share worth soars at IPO, it may open the floodgates for extra tech companies to record in London as it might reveal investor enthusiasm for the sector and a willingness to again UK tech champions.”
Raspberry Pi reminds us by no means to underestimate the facility of a easy but efficient product. Whether or not that may assist the U.Ok.’s inventory markets in an equally efficient manner stays to be seen.
