The last decade-plus has brought us a revolution in affordable, small single-board computers. The forerunner was The Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK-based organization whose goals are to provide access and education to learn computing from the ground-up. I’ve followed the company with interest since their launch in 2012.

I probably have a double-digit number of Pis in my house right now, many serving useful purposes as single-purpose servers, controllers for my 3D printer, the basis of homebrew game consoles, and the heart of the Simpsons TV project that I made for my brother-in-law last year. And a bunch sitting in drawers waiting for the next project.

Today I read that the Raspberry Pi company (not the Foundation, which will continue to own and operate it) is going public in the UK. If it happens, the move represents a watershed for a company that has been so instrumental to exploding access to computing by so many millions of kids (and kids-at-heart like me!) around the world.

Going public tends to change a company. It has already changed, actually. Since the pandemic, the company has shifted its business away from the hobbyist market. These days, it makes most of its money from commercial customers. From its filing with the London Stock Exchange:

Raspberry Pi's products are sold in three principal markets: the Industrial and Embedded market, which in 2023 accounted for 72 per cent of unit sales; the Enthusiast and Education market, which in 2023 accounted for 28 per cent of unit sales; and the semiconductor market, which Raspberry Pi entered in early 2021 with the launch of its first semiconductor product, the RP2040 microcontroller.

I hope that Raspberry Pi Foundation is talking straight when they insist their focus will remain on education and hobbyist users. I hope they see the commercial market as a flywheel to gusher the cash they need to continue development that benefits everyone.

But if not, well, I could hardly blame them. Thanks to Raspberry Pi, there’s a whole industry of inexpensive, single board computers that are mostly compatible, taking advantage of its terrific ecosystem. They’ll always have a special place in my heart!