The Raspberry Pi co-founder and his finance chief have cashed in more than £2 million of their shares now that their lock-up agreements have ended.
Eben Upton, the chief executive of the microcomputer manufacturer he founded in 2008, and Richard Boult, the company’s chief financial officer, agreed not to sell any of their shares for at least a year following last summer’s initial public offering.
That 365-day lock-up period, which is often put in place for directors and senior managers, is now over and the duo have moved quickly to monetise a chunk of their shareholdings.
Upton, 47, has sold shares worth £1.8 million while Boult, 59, has cashed in a £455,000 stake. Stock exchange filings show that the sales took place on Tuesday. Raspberry Pi said both men had undertaken share sales “for financial planning reasons”.
For Upton, the shares he sold accounted for 14 per cent of his overall stake in the business, and he still owns 2.5 million shares currently worth around £11 million. For Boult, the sale represented just over a fifth of his shareholding, leaving him with 476,000 shares worth just over £2 million.
Their decision to cash in knocked Raspberry Pi shares down 14p, or 3 per cent, to 444p on Wednesday. Stock market investors tend not to like it when directors sell because they interpret it as a lack of confidence in the company’s outlook.
The shares have now lost a third of their value so far in 2025, although investors who bought in at the IPO in June 2024, when the shares were launched at 280p, remain comfortably in profit.
Raspberry Pi, based in Cambridge, was founded 17 years ago by Upton, when, as director of studies in Cambridge, he was struggling to get anyone to study computer science. Its computers are almost entirely manufactured in Pencoed, south Wales.
The company is best known for selling low-cost, credit-card-sized computers to help children learn to code, but it has expanded to sell its products to companies that want to use its technology to power their own systems, such as security cameras, ventilation systems and self-pour coffee machines.
When it made its stock market debut last June, the company was valued at £541 million, making it the largest listing in London for almost a year. Its current stock market value is just shy of £900 million, enough for a place on the FTSE 250.
Raspberry Pi turned a pre-tax profit of $16.3 million on sales of $259.5 million in 2024, below the $38.2 million pre-tax profit and sales of £265.8 million it delivered in 2023. Bosses said the drop-off reflected “industry-wide destocking” after witnessing “exceptional” demand in 2023.
A number of other directors, who were not subject to such strict lock-up agreements, were able to start selling their shares from last September. Upton’s wife, Liz, has also been cashing in: she sold £248,000 worth of shares back in September and another £186,000 worth on New Year’s Eve. She co-founded Raspberry Pi alongside her husband and headed up the marketing and communications teams before leaving last November.
