Arm buys minority stake in Raspberry Pi to bolster IoT alliance

Cambridge tech soulmates Arm and Raspberry Pi have strengthened the bonds between their businesses at a key time for both enterprises.

Arm has agreed to make a strategic investment into Raspberry Pi months ahead of the latter’s intention to IPO in London. No figures are being given for the deal.

Arm, a recent addition to the NASDAQ market in New York, says the commitment further extends a successful long-term partnership between the companies as they collaborate to deliver critical solutions for the Internet of Things developer community.

As the demand for edge compute accelerates, with the proliferation of more demanding IoT and AI applications, Raspberry Pi’s solutions are putting the power of low-cost, high-performance computing into the hands of people and businesses all over the world.

This investment further cements a partnership that began in 2008, and which has seen the release of many popular Arm-based Raspberry Pi products for students, enthusiasts and commercial developers. Raspberry Pi’s most recent flagship product, Raspberry Pi 5, became available at the end of October.

“Arm and Raspberry Pi share a vision to make computing accessible for all, by lowering barriers to innovation so that anyone, anywhere can learn, experience and create new IoT solutions,” said Paul Williamson, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Line of Business, Arm.

“With the rapid growth of edge and endpoint AI applications, platforms like those from Raspberry Pi, built on Arm, are critical to driving the adoption of high-performance IoT devices globally by enabling developers to innovate faster and more easily.

“This strategic investment is further proof of our continued commitment to the developer community, and to our partnership with Raspberry Pi.”

Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi, added: “Arm technology has always been central to the platforms we create and this investment is an important milestone in our longstanding partnership.

“Using Arm technology as the foundation of our current and future products offers us access to the compute performance, energy efficiency and extensive software ecosystem we need, as we continue to remove barriers to entry for everyone, from students and enthusiasts, to professional developers deploying commercial IoT systems at scale.”

Raspberry Pi’s mission is to democratise technology: from companies large and small, to the kitchen table tinkerer, to the classroom coder, it makes computers and computing accessible and affordable for everybody.