Raspberry Pi, the maker of primary, low cost computer systems, is within the midst of a retail investor inventory frenzy that brings the glory days of GameStop to thoughts. Over the previous week, shares within the firm, which trades on the London Inventory Trade, have elevated almost 50%.
The spike got here as a shock to just about everybody, together with CEO Eben Upton, who was on trip when the sharp rise started.
“It does look like individuals are choosing us for these functions,” Upton informed Bloomberg. “I don’t know if ‘meme inventory’ is a slur or not. There may be clearly a retail component to our shareholder base.”
Shares are presently buying and selling at 402 pence (about $5.43 in U.S. {dollars}), after spiking as excessive as 550.5 pence on Wednesday.
The surge got here following a publish on X by person “aleabitoreddit” that touted Raspberry Pi as a long-term commerce. The bottom of that case was that AI brokers like OpenClaw might drive demand for lower-cost computer systems. “Persons are brazenly shopping for Raspberry Pis and Apple Mac Minis for OpenClaw/PicoClaw,” they argued, “so income ought to profit from elevated demand.”
The surge in Raspberry Pi, which sells bare-bones units for as little as $45, comes because the AI growth is making a scarcity on RAM and reminiscence chips, driving the value of most client electronics (from PCs to TVs) larger.
Inventory spikes pushed by retail traders do not all the time observe the identical logic path as different publicly traded firms. Typically, traders from Reddit kind a herd on the urging/logic of 1 person, which was the case with GameStop earlier than that went on to guide the meme inventory motion. Earnings and profitability aren’t all the time factored into the traders’ selections.
Raspberry Pi is not a GameStop, although. The corporate reported $260 million in income in fiscal 2024, together with $63 million in gross revenue. Within the first half of fiscal 2025, the corporate reported gross revenue of $33.2 million.
