The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2X.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
CEO Eben Upton confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News that Raspberry Pi had appointed bankers at London firms Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for “when the IPO market reopens.”
Raspberry previously raised money from Sony and semiconductor and software design firm ARM, and it sought public investment.
Upton also told The Register that Raspberry Pi "does interesting work and makes money, and I don’t think those imperatives are going to change.
Still, news of the potential transformation of Raspberry Pi Ltd from the private arm of the education-minded Raspberry Pi Foundation into a publicly traded company, beholden to profit generation for shareholders, reverberated about the way you’d expect on Reddit, Hacker News, and elsewhere.
The company writes that “profits from the sale of Raspberry Pi computers help fund the Foundation’s educational initiatives.”
The UK government’s Companies House lists the foundation as having 75 percent ownership of shares and voting rights, with the ability to add or remove directors, though that information was last submitted in 2016.
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