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Raspberry Pi is now a public company
- isoprophlex 2y agoHope they can keep their focus on simplicity, usability and developer experience now that they're beholden to the whims of their shareholders.
- Havoc 2y agoAs much as I love rasps (think I’ve got a dozen or so) I struggle to see their moat. They certainly have an edge on ecosystem and software polish but it’s pretty slim. I’ve got a mixed k8s cluster - half rasps half orange pi…and I’m having more issues on the rasp side.
- janosdebugs 2y agoName recognition? You know exactly what you get, which isn't necessarily true for the bajilion clones out there. You know that if you buy an rPi, you can buy a replacement tomorrow and it will work the same. In a world where I can't even rebuy a laptop of the same make and model a few months later that's quite the advantage.
- bantunes 2y agoThere are a hundred outfits out of Shenzen doing what they do, but Raspberry Pi's move a lot of units because they have backwards compatibility, good support and that has fostered a healthy ecosystem over the years. If even a single Chinese outfit got the memo, they'd be out of business quickly - but they don't. I don't understand why customer support is so hard to get right for these Chinese companies. The pervasive mindset seems to be beating others on price is enough. For the maker market Pi's are aiming for, it really isn't.
- afavour 2y agoFor the likes of us there isn’t really much of a moat but RPi puts a lot of effort into accessibility for beginners. Look at orangepi.org: “We offer one-stop customized service based on open source products to shorten the path from technology to application” vs raspberrypi.org: “Empowering young people to use computing technologies to shape the world” The underlying tech is very similar but the marketing and community aims are very different. If RPi can capture a solid chunk of the education market they’ll be able to dine out on that, and it doesn’t seem like OPi is equipped to do the same.
- distances 2y agoFirst impression when visiting orangepi.org with Firefox: "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." They don't have TLS enabled. Doesn't exactly promise much on the software side of the board either.
- loudmax 2y agoGeerlingguy did a video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKGtRrElu30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKGtRrElu30 Raspberry's moat largely comes to support and compatibility. They've fostered such an ecosystem around their SBCs that they're usually the safer choice if you want to build something with any expectation of long term stability. Now that they're public, there's no guarantee that they'll maintain this commitment. They may feel pressure to sacrifice long term success for short term profitability. We'll have to see how this plays out.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoCommunity, branding, hardware compat and software support. Like nvidia.
- matthewfelgate 2y agoI can't find them on the FreeTrade app yet :-(
- matthews2 2y agoRetail trading starts on Friday morning.
- mypastself 2y agoI’d be interested to hear your thesis, if you’re planning to invest. Substantially increased industrial use? I own quite a few Pis (although mini PCs have largely replaced them in my homelab), but I’m not sure why we should be expecting major growth.
- drrlvn 2y agoSomething people often miss in threads about this: > Raspberry Pi Ltd, the public company, is the commercial subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
- 5636588 2y agoA nonprofit overseeing a for-profit arm, where have I seen this before?
- baq 2y agoIKEA?
- 3D30497420 2y agoSame thought I had, though it seems more like a tax-dodge for IKEA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Financial_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Financial_information
- portaouflop 2y agoTIL Ikea is technically non-profit. That’s insane
- intunderflow 2y agoNovo Nordisk would be the biggest example I'm aware of
- freeone3000 2y agoMozilla
- walthamstow 2y agoBBC Studios / BBC America
- Gormo 2y agoPlenty of places -- it's not an especially rare model.
- cpressland 2y agoAs somebody with very little understanding of the business world: why would a seemingly successful organisation like this become a public company? What benefits are there?
- mschuster91 2y agoBetter access to external funding, for one.
- mytailorisrich 2y agoIt allows the company to raise money and existing shareholders to cash out or at least to turn their shares into liquid ones (that they can sell easily), with a "real" market value. In this case, the article says that they've raised $200 million, which means they sold new shares as part of the IPO.
- nicce 2y agoEither they want to start rapidly growing or it is exit plan for the founders. But if they company is very profitable already, this should not be necessary. They could still grow with complete mission-oriented way.
- mbs159 2y agoI wonder what the impact would be to us (consumers) if there would be pressure from shareholders to increase profits. Will future Raspberry Pies be completely bare-bones unless you pay a hefty premium?
- lrvick 2y agoI only ever bought Pis because it was a mission focused company. Now that they are in stock-price-go-up mode, I am inclined to buy and promote cheap clones, and I expect most will feel the same.
- riv991 2y agoThe foundation still owns the vast majority of the company
- michaelt 2y agoYeah, and the openai nonprofit still owns a majority of the openai for-profit company. Turns out that doesn't mean shit.
- riv991 2y agoYou can argue the complete opposite point with Novo Nordisk. It's up to the foundation to use it's influence
- ActionHank 2y agoSo if the foundation makes decisions that drive stock up in the short term, they make themselves richer? Definitely won't be abused /s
- nashashmi 2y agoMaybe, but I think part of the fear behind the IPO is that some bully type investor like Icahn will do a takeover/weigh-in and mess it up, towards a profit driven enterprise. With major ownership held by someone else, this becomes less likely.
- nashashmi 2y agowait! The foundation sells Pis? What does the for-profit company do? Hell, where did the foundation get its money before?
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- anjolo 2y ago[dead]
- lililililililll 2y ago[flagged]
- mbs159 2y agoAccording to the article, the market should open on Friday. Currently trading is limited to institutional shareholders.
- lililililililll 2y ago[flagged]
- meindnoch 2y agoAnd... this is... good? :-/
- koolala 2y agothey have been... sold... out...
- wirthjason 2y agoThe words “public company” often carry a negative tone but ownership rules are complicated. It doesn’t mean much until you know the specifics. For example a non-tech example of a publicly owned corporation that people might not think of is the Green Bay Packers. https://www.profootballnetwork.com/who-owns-the-green-bay-packers/ https://www.profootballnetwork.com/who-owns-the-green-bay-pa...
- jasomill 2y agoAnother tech example of a charitable foundation funded by for-profit subsidiaries (both wholly-owned and publicly traded) is the Carl Zeiss Foundation[1]. [1] https://www.carl-zeiss-stiftung.de/en/ https://www.carl-zeiss-stiftung.de/en/
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- bobmcnamara 2y agoNow we're never going to get better documentation /$.
- kevindamm 2y agoBe the change... /¢
- neilv 2y agoThis model has been a mixed success for Mozilla and OpenAI. The TechCrunch article is speaking only of it like any other commercial investment opportunity. Where's a good writeup of charity/non-profit mission concerns about this commercial subsidiary? (Example from early on in Raspberry Pi history: There were concerns about pragmatic compromises of open source or libre software principles that the RasPi made, so that they could use the closed-software Broadcom SoC, presumably to deliver an otherwise good education-oriented SBC at a price point that made it accessible and got uptake.)
- secfirstmd 2y agoSadly Mozilla is essentially a company that survives on a Google handed, given by the big G to reduce any risk of anti-trust.
- MagicMoonlight 2y agoI love that certain people get to buy and sell it before the public can. It’s just a fairer way of doing it.
- adamtaylor_13 2y ago"Step aside Tommy, let the _MEN_ handle this." But yeah, kinda wack.
- nickpeterson 2y agoyep, the stock market is truly an example of fair and ethical policies.
- hosteur 2y ago[flagged]
- wg0 2y ago[flagged]
- doctor_eval 2y agoUgh you just gave me chills.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y agoYou've inspired me: "Our parent company is a non-profit, but you'll be paying a few taxes!"
- Foivos 2y agoI cannot find the stock ticker symbol. I am aware that they are not publicly traded yet, but the ticker should be known already, right?
- swarnie 2y agoRaspberry Pi Holdings PLC (RPI.L) LSE Trading since yesterday.
- redleader55 2y agoLSE:RPI https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/RPI/raspberry-pi-holdings-plc/company-page https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/RPI/raspberry-pi-h...
- dschuetz 2y agopublic company = money milking machine. so long, and thanks for all the pies.
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- andrewstuart 2y agoIntel N100 already is a better option for many user cases of Raspberry Pi.
- 404mm 2y agoI agree. I upgraded from pi 4 to N100 with 16GB RAM and 512NVMe SSD for about $145. And it included a case and power adapter.
- wg0 2y agoThis is high time for a group of individuals to bring a RISC-V SBC with a tweaked Linux distribution along with it to fill the gap and... later get to IPO.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoRISC-V is still way too slow, and even then, there’s this stupid misunderstanding about RISC-V and open source. RISC-V means only that the instruction set is open source. It does NOT mean: - There are open source drivers - The chip design is open source - The chip design is not patented - The software is not patented - The chip has no proprietary additional instructions The NVIDIA firmware blob and drivers could run on RISC-V right now with no practical benefit to you. The ISA being open source does mean that open source CPU cores can exist, but no chip is required to use them.
- freedomben 2y agoBeing an open ISA is still hugely important though, and a big improvement over the status quo. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The ISA is arguably the most important thing to have open, and the hardest to get open since it is the thing that requires the most coordination between so many disparate and disinterested entities. Today we celebrate an open ISA, tomorrow, being enabled by the open ISA, we'll be able to celebrate the next iteration of open, until at some point we get fully open.
- jovial_cavalier 2y agoThe Raspberry Pi used a broadcomm CPU... are you telling me that's open hardware? Is there any SOC chip that is totally open with no proprietary features??
- wg0 2y agoYeah, that's the whole point. Have your own CPU cores. As for slow, Rasberry Pi class of machines are not meant to compete with Intel/AMD server grade. That's for enthusiasts (with even if 40nm process) and has to be cheap. All drivers are not needed, nobody is expecting to do triple 5k displays at 120FPS. Basic WLAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth and basic display capabilities around HD even at 30FPS are good enough for that market. As for open source, you as a computer architect, can't even make your own SoC that is on x86 or ARM without paying royalties and spending lots of money upfront. Not so with RISC-V so I guess you'll see lot more RISC-V in future. This time - 20204 is the 1999 of RISC-V if you want to borrow a precedent from Linux's rise as defacto OS on server side.
- awinter-py 2y agoarduino is the other name in this space + has been making interesting moves; their industrial / PLC offering has gotten very serious in the last few years and they are ahead of pi on the cloud front (though open question whether either of them will do well in cloud; their customers are too savvy + nimble for a lock-in play) arduino is approaching the business bottom up (tiny well-known chips), pi top-down (it's just linux with some GPIO pins) also have competitors at the margin like nvidia (who could legit own 'iot edge AI' if that ever even matters) + waveshare, the off-brand pi manufacturer who remarkably has way more pi-compatible devices than actual pi excited for IPO if it means the #1 linux board finally supports suspend-to-ram
- web3-is-a-scam 2y agoI can’t even get their product anywhere at a decent price, why should I invest in this company?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y agoIt doesn’t sound like you invest, then. You’re describing a product with well known stock shortages that have, in floating, unlocked a bunch of capital which can among other things help them scale their production to meet demand. That sounds like a good thing both as a shareholder and as a consumer.
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- web3-is-a-scam 2y agoHow am I supposed to know if something is worth investing in if I can’t even use it? A pinky promise that maybe I’ll be able to get one someday isn't a good deal. I want to know what I am getting when I put my money in. Maybe if I was a VC and that’s what they were begging for my money for, but as a retail investor the value proposition is basically nothing. The company markets itself as an educational tool, but 70% of its sales are industrial? Like I get “bringing low cost computers to everyone” feels and sounds good in press releases but when the business actually focuses on something different - that seems counterproductive to their stated goal - what am I supposed to take from that?
- TheNewsIsHere 2y agoI am concerned that ultimately whatever supply chain and manufacturing improvements they see from raising this capital will benefit their commercial/industrial customers more than their non-profit/educational/enthusiast customers. I'm not asserting that will happen, but I'm concerned it will. Where I am it has been next to impossible to order a non-kit model of Pi released within the past several years since at least mid-pandemic. I started buying up SFF Lenovo boxes on eBay, which I've been somewhat happier with since I never used some of the Pi's standout features like GPIO.
- rvz 2y agoTime for some Raspberry Pi executives to cash out their millions and dump it all of retail before the semiconductor crash beings.
- dukeyukey 2y agoSince RPI don't design nor manufacture semiconductors, but use them in the product they do sell, surely a crash would benefit them?
- karolist 2y agoI never quite got the appeal of Rpi's. When I needed a silent low power home server box 10 years ago I went with Intel Atom x86 based board which supported virtualization and had expandable memory. When I needed a small low power box for and observer node this year I bought a Dell Wyse 3040 for 40€, also x86. If I wanted a general purpose PC I'd still go with a NuC or Minisforum these days.
- navaati 2y agoNone of these have GPIOs, typically. A usecase you didn't mention is "I want a MCU to do electronics but easier to program, with Linux and a shell".
- bane 2y agoJust get a usb to gpio adapter. Arduinis can be flashed to do this also. So it's just a few dollars to get the capability on a PC.
- flak48 2y agoDo any of the alternatives you've listed expose GPIO pins ?
- Zenzero 2y agoIt's marketing. For someone like me with little familiarity of the mini computer and microcontroller world, I know about raspberry pi and arduino. I know there are many others out there with likely better value and quality, but the perception of accessibility to a newbie drops off of a cliff.
- mattl 2y agoI’m guessing that 40 Euro price isn’t MSRP but some discount on a used one?
- RobotToaster 2y agoYes, but there seems to be a pretty reliable supply of used thin clients. I have no idea who still buys new thin clients, but whoever it is must replace them regularly.
- brainzap 2y agoGoodbye quality
- joshstrange 2y agoWhen the first Raspberry Pis came out I was in love. It was incredible, a full (headless) computer that was small and cheap. I played with it for a while but never had a great long-term use case for it. I bought pretty much every Pi up to the 4, always trying to find a place it could occupy in my life but never really managed to find a good use. I ran Home Assistant on a 3 then later on 4 (with a super nice case, NVME hat+stick, etc) but HA was not super stable. I, wrongly, blamed it on the HA software for a long time then I bought a Beelink mini computer and moved HA to it and I have literally not thought about HA since, it's worked flawlessly. Maybe I had bad luck, maybe I happened to get 6 (I had multiple of certain Pis) defective boards but they always felt "unstable" to me. They might run fine for months then randomly need to be rebooted. I'm sure some of you will say "I've had a Raspberry Pi 1 running constantly since I bought it and it's rock solid", good for you, that was not my experience. During COVID (maybe before as well) it came out that the company was prioritizing bulk sales over sales to individuals (or rather sales to companies that resold to individuals) which soured me. This news just further confirms my belief that the company and product I loved is dead and probably has been for some time. It was nice while it lasted.
- BillFranklin 2y agoI think they were trying to stop resellers price gouging during the chip shortage crisis. On ebay you could buy Pis for well over what they were available for on first-party sites (just like PlayStation 5s!). As a counterpoint, they let me buy Pis as an individual, but I had to send in a picture of myself with a dated piece of paper like a Reddit AMA to prove I was legit. FWIW there are Pi alternatives without the branding, but usually for the super low price point mini-PCs you are after you need to go to China to firms like Beelink...
- jovial_cavalier 2y agoThey could have just raised the prices for individual customers themselves instead of creating a massive opportunity to price gouge. Prioritizing bulk orders sounds like they just didn't want to be the front-end.
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- pjmlp 2y agoNow they are just as the boards that predated them like the Beagle Board.
- ZuLuuuuuu 2y agoWhat is the reason they are going public? Are they trying to raise money for new products/services that are otherwise not possible? If yes, do we have an idea what kind of products/services?
- RobotToaster 2y agoI’m surprised it lasted this long. It was always kinda just a marketing gimmick for broadcom that got out of hand.
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- bane 2y agoI think it's important to consider some of what Raspberry Pi's mission [1] and how they have kept and/or swayed from that. Short version, the Foundation was established to support the education and development of skilled technologists (subtext: in the UK). It came from the observation that enrollment in Computer Science courses was dropping, and that the kind of accessibility and hack-ability of previous technologies was becoming less available to people with potential interests. Inspired by previous UK efforts like the BBC Micro (and other 8-bits), and other concurrent educational efforts, they decided their niche was going to be cheap, single board, all-in-one computers. What I really respect from the RPI folks is that they've really tried to focus on building a viable UK-based technology company - as much as possible, without being zealots about it. That's their unstated mission, to revitalize the U.K.'s technical capacity: - Based on an ARM processor, a British company - Has tried to keep as much manufacturing as possible in the U.K. (Sony UK Technology Centre) - Went public on the London Stock Exchange All that being said, I feel that they've deviated a bit from this as their primary mission. During COVID when supply chains were messed up, Pi manufacturing and shipping was prioritized to large scale buyers, where the supply then seemed to end up in industrial use-cases instead of the hands of people learning. I've heard an argument, which I do think is valid, that getting a familiar tech stack into industry provides an on-ramp into jobs to the same people who had learned how to do technology on those same Pis. But there's now at least a 2 or 3 year gap where new people couldn't really onboard into the ecosystem because of availability and cost. The second challenge is the Pi 5. I do think that expectations were simply too high here and the community was expecting basically a usable desktop with fast PCI lanes and gobs of memory for $35. What's delivered is amazing, but once you build it into a "desktop", you may as well have just bought a cheap intel desktop. And that I think is the real existential problem for the Foundation today. If I were the Foundation, post Pi 5, I would be looking very seriously at alternative form factors as the future. The CM line and HAT concept has been very successful, the hackability of Pis have been amazing. Perhaps there are ways to make the concept even more modular, or more hackable. Maybe offer baseline RAM amounts soldered on, but upgradability with new modules? Make other wireless technologies a core part of the offering (HAM Radio/BTLE/4G/LTE/LoRA, etc.)? Tap more into the 3D printer space with readily available mounts and housings that provide sufficient cooling and airflow. Ready-to-go cluster computing variants, why not mini-Blade-likes using Compute Modules? What ways can the core Pi technologies expand in order to serve their primary mission and expand the ways that people can learn about technologies? Perhaps they're thinking the same thing and this is why they need to raise more money? 1 - https://static.raspberrypi.org/files/about/RaspberryPiFoundationStrategy2018%E2%80%932020.pdf https://static.raspberrypi.org/files/about/RaspberryPiFounda...
- seba_dos1 2y agoBye bye, Raspberry Pi.
- rldjbpin 2y agofor context: just upgraded to pi 5 after owning the original for over 11 years and still in service! i get that for most people reading this, rpi has been about a cheap computing platform to run containers at home. personally, i thought all that was a byproduct of a larger goal of making computing accessible. however, past five years seems to me that the foundation is side-stepped for commercial ambitions. i think that rp2040 is an excellent platform and evolution of promoting tinkering. every other design decisions no longer seem aligned with the goal of accessibility. till this day, unless you live in cambridge or near a micro center, getting one is still down to trusting resellers. before the design would go out of the way for compatibility (see composite video), and the only things that would stand out was stuff like hardware codec licensing. now, there are so many weird decisions, like micro-hdmi and needing a specific power supply and cooling to use the latest pi optimally (i had an issue with usb boot out of the box while using a standard 18w charger). whether you put it all down to inflation, getting started from scratch with rpi might still be remotely in the ballpark of buying a toy if you go for several year old models. when i bought my first pi, i was too scared to try its gpio pins because of the fear of bricking it. now with the new one and the official case that hides them away, you can forget tinkering with that. now it seems that rpi is now more aligned to our audience than tinkerers. now with the "AI kit", and other decisions, it is hard to believe that the foundation and its original goals are going to be a major focus going forward.