AI boom led to a price increase for Raspberry Pi single-board computers
Eben Upton, Chief Executive Officer for Trading at the single-board computer company Raspberry Pi, announced that starting today, some of the company's products will be available at higher prices. The explanation is simple — artificial intelligence.
AI has created an increased demand for memory chips, leading to shortages and price hikes. Due to the rising cost of memory, which is about 120% higher than last year, some Raspberry Pi products are now sold at higher prices. The affected products include the Compute Module 4 and 5 with 4 GB and 8 GB of RAM, as well as the Raspberry Pi 500 single-board computer-keyboard. Prices for other products have remained the same due to reduced margins and cost reductions in other areas.
As many of you know, memory chip prices have been rising rapidly over the past six months. The insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for artificial intelligence applications is competing for manufacturing space with the commodity LPDDR memory used in Raspberry Pi, leading to shortages and price increases. Memory chip costs are currently about 120% higher than they were a year ago.
We came into this year with significant memory stocks, which allowed us to hold prices at their previous levels. However, we have now reached a point where we have to pass some of these costs on to others. Starting today, we are making the following price changes:
- Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 with 4 GB of memory will increase in price by $5;
- Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 with 8 GB of memory will increase in price by $10;
- The price of the Raspberry Pi 500 has been increased by $10, to $100.
Upton states that Raspberry Pi intends to lower the prices of the affected products "as soon as memory prices return to their long-term downward trajectory." The current price increase is not permanent.