7 ms·

Raspberry Pi is preparing for an IPO in London for likely more than $500M

63 points by e145bc455f1 3y ago

duxup 3y ago
Is it even possible that they can live up to that evaluation? Are they just doomed to fail at that point?
- ZunarJ5 3y ago
  Military contracts.
  - duxup 3y ago
    Are they doing a lot of military contracts now? This seems like a product that people already selling the military would have sourced their parts for ... before this company is even in the running.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      Something to be said for using mass-produced, very cheap, locally produced electronics in military stuff. Even moreso when the electronics engineers you hire stand a good chance of owning a few at home.
      - duxup 3y ago
        My experience is that government / military contracts are difficult to deal with / get if you're not established and those synergies like "engineer has some at home" are non existent.
        dukeyukey 3y ago
        Was more thinking that if an engineer has some at home, they're probably already gonna know how it works versus some arcane chipset and driver set that they need to learn from scratch.
        nightmonkey 3y ago
        If true, "engineer has some at home" means the home is about to blow up. :(
- dragontamer 3y ago
  $500 million is pretty small IMO. They're probably fairly evaluated there. Are they roughly 1/100th of a Microchip? Maybe that's a bad comparison. But $500 million is in-and-around the market cap of u-blox. SiTime is $2.5 Billion right now (5x larger than the $500 million IPO). So I think its a fair comparison to make.
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
I fully understand the financial incentive but I feel it's going to be the bean counters who make calls from now. Or is it already?
- bogantech 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
    I'd assume they do have the visions. Getting $$$ is definitely not a crime, and the whole business builds on getting $$$. What I'm worried about is something similar to Unity.
schappim 3y ago
Earlier discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817
idiotsecant 3y ago
...why? There are like a zillion Chinese single board computers out there. What's so special about raspberry pi that it's worth a half a billion dollar valuation?
- blacksmith_tb 3y ago
  Well, I suppose some of that suggests optimism about selling boards to commercial customers (in spite of all the assurances about still having enough to sell to hobbyists). And commercial customers, just like hobbyists, want SBCs that have decent hw and working, maintained sw. Which is sadly not the case for pretty much any of the competitors, not reliably.
- whynotmaybe 3y ago
  Some could say that on a European pov, it's because it's not Chinese.
- polski-g 3y ago
  Because they actually provide updates and support to the platform. All the Chinese boards release a single OS, Linux packages maintained on some strange .cn domain. Something is wrong with the wifi chip driver but they don't care, they've moved on to the next iteration.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    This. There are a billion SBCs on the market and most of them are irrelevant because you're stuck with some janky image from an out-of-date kernel that probably even the original company can't recreate from source. Hobbyists who enjoy tinkering with them for a few months after they buy them might not mind, but it's not gonna work for the big buyers and it's not great for educational purposes either.
  - Already__Taken 3y ago
    I'd argue no not if they go public they can't.
- bsder 3y ago
m463 3y ago
I'm confused. Weren't they sort of started as an educational/charity/open sort of organization? It seems to me like if Richard Stallman announced an IPO. I think this will affect users of the raspberry pi. When it becomes for-profit, we will see prices go up, "open" disappear, decisions become more self-serving.
- logicprog 3y ago
  I mean they already plan to have a Sony-made closed black box "AI" chip that sends telemetry to Sony, and they unapologetically work with ex-surveillance people, they're already there imo.
  - xyx0826 3y ago
    Can you provide sources on this? I’ve never heard of their AI chip.
    - logicprog 3y ago
      Yup: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/raspberry-pi-ai-capabilities-sony https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/raspberry-pi-a... This article also mentions transferring metadata to the cloud.
      - gruturo 3y ago
        That article seems beyond awful, consistently misspelling raspberry, claiming the 4 is the latest model, and the sentence "According to Sony, it protects privacy by simply transferring metadata to the cloud and conducting all data analysis entirely on-chip" is quite contradictory. Also, the Sony press release they reference as a source (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raspberry-pi-receives-strategic-investment-from-sony-semiconductor-solutions-corporation-301795015.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raspberry-pi-receiv...) has 0 mentions of cloud.
        logicprog 3y ago
fsagx 3y ago
Geerlings summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrhE6MnGi1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrhE6MnGi1A

63 points by e145bc455f1 3y ago

duxup 3y ago

Is it even possible that they can live up to that evaluation? Are they just doomed to fail at that point?

ZunarJ5 3y ago
Military contracts.
- duxup 3y ago
  Are they doing a lot of military contracts now? This seems like a product that people already selling the military would have sourced their parts for ... before this company is even in the running.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    Something to be said for using mass-produced, very cheap, locally produced electronics in military stuff. Even moreso when the electronics engineers you hire stand a good chance of owning a few at home.
    - duxup 3y ago
      My experience is that government / military contracts are difficult to deal with / get if you're not established and those synergies like "engineer has some at home" are non existent.
      - dukeyukey 3y ago
        Was more thinking that if an engineer has some at home, they're probably already gonna know how it works versus some arcane chipset and driver set that they need to learn from scratch.
      - nightmonkey 3y ago
        If true, "engineer has some at home" means the home is about to blow up. :(
dragontamer 3y ago
$500 million is pretty small IMO. They're probably fairly evaluated there. Are they roughly 1/100th of a Microchip? Maybe that's a bad comparison. But $500 million is in-and-around the market cap of u-blox. SiTime is $2.5 Billion right now (5x larger than the $500 million IPO). So I think its a fair comparison to make.

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

I fully understand the financial incentive but I feel it's going to be the bean counters who make calls from now. Or is it already?

bogantech 3y ago
[flagged]
- hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  I'd assume they do have the visions. Getting $$$ is definitely not a crime, and the whole business builds on getting $$$. What I'm worried about is something similar to Unity.

schappim 3y ago

Earlier discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187817

idiotsecant 3y ago

...why? There are like a zillion Chinese single board computers out there. What's so special about raspberry pi that it's worth a half a billion dollar valuation?

blacksmith_tb 3y ago
Well, I suppose some of that suggests optimism about selling boards to commercial customers (in spite of all the assurances about still having enough to sell to hobbyists). And commercial customers, just like hobbyists, want SBCs that have decent hw and working, maintained sw. Which is sadly not the case for pretty much any of the competitors, not reliably.
whynotmaybe 3y ago
Some could say that on a European pov, it's because it's not Chinese.
polski-g 3y ago
Because they actually provide updates and support to the platform. All the Chinese boards release a single OS, Linux packages maintained on some strange .cn domain. Something is wrong with the wifi chip driver but they don't care, they've moved on to the next iteration.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  This. There are a billion SBCs on the market and most of them are irrelevant because you're stuck with some janky image from an out-of-date kernel that probably even the original company can't recreate from source. Hobbyists who enjoy tinkering with them for a few months after they buy them might not mind, but it's not gonna work for the big buyers and it's not great for educational purposes either.
- Already__Taken 3y ago
  I'd argue no not if they go public they can't.
bsder 3y ago

m463 3y ago

I'm confused. Weren't they sort of started as an educational/charity/open sort of organization? It seems to me like if Richard Stallman announced an IPO. I think this will affect users of the raspberry pi. When it becomes for-profit, we will see prices go up, "open" disappear, decisions become more self-serving.

logicprog 3y ago
I mean they already plan to have a Sony-made closed black box "AI" chip that sends telemetry to Sony, and they unapologetically work with ex-surveillance people, they're already there imo.
- xyx0826 3y ago
  Can you provide sources on this? I’ve never heard of their AI chip.
  - logicprog 3y ago
    Yup: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/raspberry-pi-ai-capabilities-sony https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/raspberry-pi-a... This article also mentions transferring metadata to the cloud.
    - gruturo 3y ago
      That article seems beyond awful, consistently misspelling raspberry, claiming the 4 is the latest model, and the sentence "According to Sony, it protects privacy by simply transferring metadata to the cloud and conducting all data analysis entirely on-chip" is quite contradictory. Also, the Sony press release they reference as a source (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raspberry-pi-receives-strategic-investment-from-sony-semiconductor-solutions-corporation-301795015.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raspberry-pi-receiv...) has 0 mentions of cloud.
      - logicprog 3y ago

fsagx 3y ago

Geerlings summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrhE6MnGi1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrhE6MnGi1A