Raspberry Pi Trading Could Go Public This Spring (tomshardware.com) 32
"According to a report in The Telegraph, Raspberry Pi Trading, the arm responsible for the creation of the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi Pico and the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W could soon be listed with a value of more than £370m ($493m)," reports Tom's Hardware:
Raspberry Pi Trading has hired advisors from two investment banks, Stifel and Liberum to advise on floating the company in spring 2022. The news comes just a few months after Raspberry Pi received a £45m ($60m) investment from Lansdowne Partners and the Ezrah Charitable Trust which was used to fund the development of new products as demand increased during the global pandemic. A source close to The Telegraph has valued Raspberry Pi at a premium of $500m...
"Obviously, the $45m we raised in September takes away some of the urgency around figuring out how we fund the future. On the other hand, we have great plans for what we are going to do over the next five years." Eben Upton, talking to The Telegraph.
"Obviously, the $45m we raised in September takes away some of the urgency around figuring out how we fund the future. On the other hand, we have great plans for what we are going to do over the next five years." Eben Upton, talking to The Telegraph.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought the pi thinking it was going to be a non-profit org. Anyway, whatever, good luck to them .. appreciate what they have done before. I read somewhere they were aiming to make the Zero W2 (err, no relation to the IRS) cost $5. if they go public would that be possible? Also was hoping they would work on super cheap display tech.
Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
I know very little about the Raspberry pi, but I agree this seems totally counter to what I thought was it's purpose/vision. A bit like a Wikipedia IPO.
Re: (Score:2)
I can see the temptation of it. The raspberry pi is one of the best selling computers ever, not many can avoid the temptation of being a billionaire especially legally.
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It's ok, I'm all ready to jump ship to the first decent RISC-V board that emerges. It would not be wrong to adopt some of the RPi interface specs where that makes sense.
Just not interested in ARM any more with Nvidia slavering all over it.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's a massive turnoff. Thanks for the heads up.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
The Raspberry Pi Foundation [raspberrypi.org] is a charity. Raspberry Pi Trading [raspberrypi.com] is a separate organization, though it is affiliated with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, The Raspberry Pi Foundation owns Raspberry Pi Trading - or it did. If I'm reading things right with their official company submissions at Companies House, they have recently split the number of shares from 1 (owned by the Foundation) into 100,000 ordinary shares. They have also granted the Directors permission to distribute those shares as they wish. So it looks like its payday.
The Foundation has basically changed from a charity that owns a trading company, into a charity that is reliant on a public company.
Going public always worries me... (Score:5, Informative)
Going public means that a company is beholden to the whims of stockholders, and this is concerning, because instead of thinking in increments of making the best product, they have to think in quarterly numbers, and what is best for this quarter, damn the future.
This means not thinking of affordable devices. The beauty of Raspberry Pi hardware is that it is inexpensive. Yes, there are many other SBCs out there, but costing a lot more. Raspberry Pi manages to do a great job of adding features, cranking up speed... but keeping components from getting too hot, and not making things too expensive.
Without this inexpensive, well-supported medium, there isn't really much out there for ARM SBCs at this price range, especially at the Pi Zero or Zero W 2 range. It would be a true loss for the computing community were prices hiked exponentially and development only done on high-speed/high-heat CPUs.
Re:Going public always worries me... (Score:5, Funny)
They could keep the devices cheap by figuring out ways to monetize their users. For example, they could install telemetry that always shares the values of your GPIO pins with their advertising partners.
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Re: (Score:2)
Going public means that a company is beholden to the whims of stockholders
Then buy some stock, so you are one of those stockholders.
This announcement is news to me, but I'll likely buy some shares. Why not?
This means not thinking of affordable devices.
There are plenty of successful companies that focus on the low end of their market.
Yes, there are many other SBCs out there, but costing a lot more.
And none of them are near as successful as the RPi. So why do you think RPi will dump their successful strategy to emulate the losers? That makes no sense.
SPAC attack! (Score:3)
This is going to fly! The bank is going to tell them, look, it costs more to do an IPO than to merge with a SPAC, and you need a couple years of proper accounting before an IPO.
This is gonna be a SPAC merger. And the SPAC stock is going to the moon! Of course, then it will crash back down and settle at $7/share, but I'm gonna start loading up on all the SPAC warrants I can and hope to get lucky.
They'e cool (Score:2)
well that sucks... (Score:2)
I can see the prices double ... now is the time to buy
Re: (Score:3)
Not necessarily.
Ever wonder why there are no other single board computers, such as a Khadas, Orange Pi or Pine64 using a Broadcom SoC? AFAIK, RPi have a cosy relationship licensing chips in an exclusive, some might say anticompetiive manner, on the basis of their 'charity' status.
Abandoning not-for-profit invites competition.
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Broadcom just aren't interested in small players, and the same goes for all the other big Western SoC manufacturers like TI and Qualcomm. Unless you are going to be ordering hundreds of thousands of units minimum they don't want to work with you. That's what they have partners for, i.e. you get to pay a middle man for every unit.
The only people who will deal with smaller quantity buyers are the Chinese companies like AllWinner and Rockchip.
The RPi Foundation managed to convince Broadcom to work with them, p
So much for do gooding and education (Score:2)
Once the "foundation" gets corperatized it will be obligated to increase profits and raise prices by investors (companies that don't get sued). Investors rarely make good decisions for anyone except for short term gains.
Goodbye to the organization that catered to hobbyists and education. Thanks a lot Eben Upton, you had me fooled pretty good for many years. I suspect from this point forward what I loved about raspberry pis will disappear
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I've only ever heard of that happening in the US. Do you have any examples of it happening in the UK that we could look at?
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Once the "foundation" gets corperatized
The foundation is doing nothing of the sort. Don't confuse the Raspberry Pi Foundation with Raspberry Pi Trading. They are two different groups.
Goodbye to the organization that catered to hobbyists and education.
Yep. There's not a single for profit company out there catering to hobbyists and education. Nosirreee. None at all.
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It appears that the Rpi4 was put together and sold by the 'trading arm' I could be wrong though.
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They have all been designed, engineered and sold through the trading arm, since the Raspberry Pi 2.
Point is that the group which designed and built the thing wasn't the non-profit foundation. Just like Firefox is made by Mozilla Corporation (the taxable group which engages in deals with Google, Pocket and advertisers) and not Mozilla Foundation (a non profit).
It's not all of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. (Score:2)
It's "only" the trading arm they're talking about making public. That said, I've no idea what the implications are.
The stated justification is to raise more capital for product development; perhaps further along the line of their new RP 2040 chip; perhaps they've had enough of Broadcom controlling their chips.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation owns Raspberry Pi Trading - or it did. They have recently split the number of shares from 1 (owned by the Foundation) into 100,000 ordinary shares. They have also granted the Directors permission to distribute those shares as they wish. So it looks like its payday, with the next step being IPO and trading those shares publicly.
The Foundation has basically changed from a charity that owns a trading company, into a charity that is reliant on a public company. It would be interesti
Prime candidate for Meme Investors (Score:1)
As another guy who assumed they were non-profit, I hope they become a target for the Reddit gang, who then force the price low at the start, so us Pi users can buy them up, and then hype them up.
Then we can choose to sell and make lots of money or stay in and keep them honest ( a nice dilemma for us ).
Great plans? (Score:2)
Going public to fund great plans for the future is a mug's game. By definition you're losing control of your future - that control is in fact what you are selling.
How will they make money when (Score:1)
the only people claiming to be able to supply Raspberry Pi 4's are in China and they are asking about $130 each (huge markup) with no discount for volume? Local suppliers say they can't get any due to chip shortages.