Raspberry Pi — The $35 Single-Board Computer for Learning

The Raspberry Pi is a cheap single-board computer: processor, memory and connectors on one card-sized board. It comes from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK charity, and went on sale on 29 February 2012 through two British firms, Premier Farnell (element14) and RS Components. Every unit in the first run was the $35 Model B.

The team's most optimistic hopes had stopped at lifetime sales of 10,000. On the first day alone it took more than 100,000 orders.

Launch day

The Foundation's announcement framed this as an early sale for enthusiasts, makers and teachers, with a proper educational launch to follow later in 2012. A small profit on each unit went back into the charity.

Who made it, and why

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity registered in England and Wales (number 1129409). Its stated mission today is to enable all young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and AI.

According to Wikipedia, the Foundation was founded in autumn 2008 and registered as a charity in May 2009. Four of its founders, Eben Upton among them, were involved with the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and were worried about falling applications to its computer science course. The goal was a computer cheap enough to cost about as much as a textbook, for learning programming and electronics hands-on.

Generations and sales

Raspberry Pi said the Pi 3 had roughly ten times the original's performance, and the Pi 5 two to three times the CPU and GPU performance of the Pi 4. Both are the company's own claims. The Pi 3 and Pi 5 both use Arm Cortex processors, a line that goes back to the ARM architecture (see ARM vs x86).

With the Pico's RP2040, Raspberry Pi went from a board maker using other firms' chips to a company that also designs its own. The Pi 5's RP1 was designed by the team that built the RP2040.

The 2024 listing

The trading business began dealings on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market on 11 June 2024 as Raspberry Pi Holdings plc, under the ticker RPI.

In his post on listing day Eben Upton wrote that the money raised by the Foundation in the IPO would support its ambitions for global impact. A business started by a charity had split into a listed company and a charity holding its shares.

The business in 2025

The FY2025 results, published on 31 March 2026, reported revenue of $323.2 million, 7.6 million boards and modules shipped and 8.4 million microcontroller units, the first year microcontrollers outnumbered boards. The company said global DRAM markets had tightened significantly through 2025 and into 2026 because of AI-driven demand. In April 2026 it raised prices on higher-memory models, citing a seven-fold rise in a year in the cost of the LPDDR4 memory used in the Pi 4 and Pi 5.

Where it sits

The Raspberry Pi came out of a charity, made to put a $35 computer into learners' hands. Against hopes of 10,000 units, it passed 75 million in fourteen years and became a listed company that designs its own chips. For devices more broadly see the hardware timeline.