Raspberry Pi raises $45m for expansion
The deal is the first with outside investors and values Raspberry Pi, which has an educational foundation and a trading arm, at $500m.
“We are seeing strong demand from consumers as they use our PCs to access the internet for work and entertainment, and even faster growth from industrial companies globally as they design Raspberry Pi into their innovative Internet of Things applications,” said Eben Upton, chief executive of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. “This will enable us to scale to meet future demand.”
The chip shortage has shown the importance of paying for chip orders in advance, often up to 12 months, to secure capacity. The funding from Lansdowne Partners and the Ezrah Charitable Trust.
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“We are pleased to welcome Lansdowne Partners and The Ezrah Charitable Trust as our first outside shareholders to help us achieve the next steps in our growth,” said Upton.
The recent shortage of Raspberry Pi boards was the result of higher demand rather than chip shortages, said Upton at the time. Raspberry Pi has also been shown to be the dominant single board computer for industrial applications across the Internet of Things (IoT).
Raspberry Pi buys its chips from Broadcom, which uses TSMC as the foundry, but it has also developed its own microcontroller for a $4 pico board and to supply a a chip to the market. This will require more funding to secure capacity from the foundry. Funding will also be needed to expand production of boards at Sony in South Wales.
Distributor Okdo, part of RS Components, has been working with Sony in Wales on a recycling scheme to try to alleviate the shortage. Other related articles
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