ARM has taken a minority stake in Raspberry Pi to strengthen its position in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. The details of the investment have not been disclosed, but the move is seen as a significant step in ARM’s efforts to foster innovation and growth in the IoT space.
Since its inception in 2008, Raspberry Pi has become synonymous with accessible computing, empowering hobbyists, educators, and professionals alike. ARM’s processors have been a key component of Raspberry Pi’s success, providing the computational power for these versatile devices. With more than half of Raspberry Pis sold since 2020 being deployed in industrial and commercial environments, the company has shifted from a hobbyist image to a serious player in the IoT market.
This shift comes as the industry faces a growing challenge from RISC-V, an open-source processor architecture that has been gaining traction among companies like Qualcomm and Google. These tech giants are exploring RISC-V for potential use in devices running Wear OS and other applications, posing a direct challenge to ARM’s dominance in the processor market.
The timing of ARM’s investment coincides with the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 5, the most powerful iteration of the device to date. Featuring a Broadcom BCM2712 application processor with four 64-bit capable Cortex-A76 cores and a VideoCore-VII GPU, the Raspberry Pi 5 promises to deliver more than double the performance of its predecessor.
