Enterprise Does Big Things with the Tiny Raspberry Pi

When the ultra-affordable, credit-card sized Raspberry Pi chip first became available in 2012, its potential quickly became clear. Not just an educational tool or a neat toy for hackers to tinker with, this little computer had a big future: five years (and five versions) later, its potential has been realized.

The Raspberry Pi has now become the basis for a series of impressive and well-funded ventures in a variety of sectors. Here’s a rundown of some of the fresh-baked enterprises vying for a piece of that pie.

Why Businesses Build on the Pi

The appeal for a start-up is easy to see. A Raspberry Pi is a complete computer on one small board, with a processor, memory, USB ports, video output and a row of pins for connecting sensors, motors and lights. It runs Linux, so developers can use familiar tools and a huge library of free software.

That means a small team doesn’t need to design its own electronics from scratch to get a product working. It can build a prototype on an off-the-shelf board, test it with real users and only worry about custom hardware later, if at all. For hardware companies, where mistakes are expensive, that’s a big head start.

Four Companies Betting on the Pi

Company: WaterScope

Economic sector: Environmental science

Funding story: After initial grants from Cambridge University, the company has since raised over £15,000 ($18,500 USD) in funding.

What they do: A simple, lightweight, low-cost water testing kit for developing communities. With a 3D-printed microscope hooked up to a Raspberry Pi chip, the WaterScope can quickly and effectively tell you if your water’s safe to drink—something that’s still of severe concern for hundreds of millions of people each day.

Company: NEC Display Solutions

Economic sector: Electronic displays

Funding story: NEC has been a leader in large-format displays for years. The company recently announced that it will launch a line of Raspberry Pi-enhanced displays (up to 98 inches) in 2017.

What they do: A range of smart, IoT-connected displays for business, that are customizable, potentially upgradable, and thanks to the presence of the Raspberry Pi, relatively inexpensive.

Company: Piper

Economic sector: Education

Funding story: After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Piper secured a funding round of $2.1 million from a handful of investors, including Princeton University and the cofounder of Skype.

What they do: DIY computer kits for kids. Students can assemble their own working computer and build up to a special treat: a custom edition of Minecraft that lets them solve engineering puzzles. Playing video games in class has rarely been this rewarding.

Company: Western Digital

Economic sector: Hard drives

Funding story: WD is already one of the largest data storage companies in the world, and they’re targeting a large group of users with their new line of PiDrive Foundation Edition drives.

What they do: Designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi, these ultrathin, low-cost drives give tinkerers a lot more storage to play with, as well as the ability to quickly switch between operating systems. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts point out that the combination could make these drives an ideal setup for dedicated Bitcoin nodes.

What Happened Next

WaterScope kept going and grew well beyond its early funding. Founded in 2015 and based at the University of Cambridge, it says it has since raised more than £900,000 in non-dilutive funding, meaning grants and awards rather than investors buying shares. Its current system filters a water sample, incubates it and then uses a built-in microscope and machine learning to count E. coli and other coliform bacteria automatically, with an optional module that uploads results to an online dashboard.

NEC’s bet on the Pi stuck too. When Raspberry Pi launched its Compute Module 3+ in January 2019, the company noted that “many NEC digital-signage displays incorporate a socket for CM3,” its Compute Module 3. The Compute Module is a stripped-down Pi designed to plug into other companies’ products, which is exactly how a display maker would want to use it.

Piper’s 2016 seed round, as TechCrunch reported, came from investors including Princeton’s Alumni Entrepreneurs Fund, 500 Startups and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. The kit was aimed at 7 to 12 year olds and included a Raspberry Pi 3, a display and a wooden case that snaps together like a puzzle.

From Hobby Board to Listed Company

The bigger story is what happened to Raspberry Pi itself. The companies in this article turned out to be early signs of where its sales would come from. By the time Raspberry Pi went public on the London Stock Exchange in June 2024, CNN reported that it had sold more than 60 million computers and that industrial customers, such as tech companies and manufacturers, bought more than 70% of them. The listing valued the company at nearly £542 million ($689 million) and raised £166 million ($211 million).

In other words, the “neat toy for hackers” became, mostly, a component inside other companies’ products. Education and hobbyists still matter to Raspberry Pi, but businesses like NEC are now its biggest buyers.

What It Means for Founders

For hardware founders, the lesson from this list is to start with what already exists. WaterScope, Piper and NEC all built something new on top of a cheap, well-supported board rather than designing their own computer. That kept costs down and let them spend their effort on the part that made their product different, whether that was a microscope, a classroom kit or a display.

It also pays to watch where a platform is heading. Raspberry Pi’s industrial products, like the Compute Module, were built for exactly the kind of companies featured here, and choosing a platform that’s investing in business users makes it more likely the parts will still be available when a product goes into production.