Raspberry Pi officially announces intent to IPO

As expected earlier this year, Raspberry Pi is going public on the stock exchange in London. Back then, CEO Eben Upton said he did not expect the IPO to change how Raspberry Pi did things, but history tells us that initial public offerings tend to, well, change how companies do things. In their official announcement that they intend to hold an IPO, there's an incredibly interesting and telling contradiction, as noted by @yassie_j on MastoAkkoma:

Raspberry Pi, in their listing press release, says: The Enthusiast and Education market is the heart" of the Raspberry Pi movement.

But also says: Industrial and Embedded market [...] accounts [for] over 72 per cent

So the heart seems to be going neglected, it seems, because there's no way you're going to not cash in on industrial applications. Especially when you've just done a big IPO.

@yassie_j on Akkoma

This exactly illustrates the fears we all have about what an IPO is going to mean for Raspberry Pi. It's already become increasingly more difficult for enthusiasts to get their hands on the latest Raspberry Pi models, but once the IPO's done and there's shareholders breathing down their neck, that will most likely only get worse. If the industrial and embedded market is where you're making most of your money, where do you think Raspberry Pi devices are going to end up?

Luckily the market's a lot bigger and more varied now than it was back when Raspberry Pi was new, so we have a wide variety of options to choose from. Still, I'm definitely worried about what Raspberry Pi, as a company, will look like five, ten years from now.