Shares of Raspberry Pi (LSE:RPI) rocketed 36% yesterday (17 February), leaving all other FTSE 250 stocks in the dust. This spectacular single-day surge catapulted it to fourth place in the FTSE 250’s year-to-date performance rankings.
Not a bad day at the office for the stock then. But what caused the sudden jump?
A strange rally
For those unfamiliar, Raspberry Pi makes low-cost, mini computers that are used by enthusiasts and engineers worldwide. While originally created by a UK charity to help people learn computer programming, 70% of the firm’s sales today come from industrial and embedded applications.
The tech company went public in June 2024 and the stock reached 766p by January 2025. Since then though, it’s been all downhill and it was languishing at just 257p earlier this month. But yesterday the share price jumped back above 400p.
Why? Well, regulatory filings yesterday revealed that founder-CEO Eben Upton had bought 4,684 shares at around 282p. However, that alone can’t explain such a huge jump because he snapped up 15,314 shares at 260p earlier this month. Then another 15,072 at 264p a few days later.
On both occasions, the share price didn’t really budge. So insider buying can’t explain the surge.
Moreover, there was no news out from the company, which isn’t due to report 2025 earnings until March. Indeed, when asked about it, Raspberry Pi said: “There’s nothing from the company side beyond what’s already in the public domain.”
AI chatter
According to The Telegraph, the reason appears to be related to AI. You see, the company’s micro-computers can be used to run OpenClaw, a popular AI chatbot. It connects to messaging apps like WhatsApp and can do tasks such as managing emails and calendars.
Users have been adapting the AI agent through a cluster of Raspberry Pis, with loads of viral videos showing how to do this.
Therefore, this suggests that Raspberry Pi has suddenly become an AI meme stock, driven higher by social media buzz.
Does this stock interest me?
Of course, if lots of people are suddenly buying the firm’s single-board computers to run customised AI agents, then it could enjoy a spike in sales. In January, the company said adjusted EBITDA for 2025 would be ahead of market consensus forecasts, at not less than $45m.
That would represent more than 20% year-on-year growth, on revenue of $311m. However, management warned that the price of LPDDR4 DRAM — the memory chip used in many Raspberry Pi products — has risen sharply in recent months, with some major suppliers warning of supply constraints.
This stems from memory manufacturers shifting production capacity to capitalise on booming AI data centre demand.
“There is significant uncertainty as to the timing of a return to more normal DRAM pricing and availability,” the firm warned. “Visibility beyond H1 2026 is limited“.
Given that meme stock traders could dump their shares en masse at any time, I’m not interested in investing in Raspberry Pi today. Especially when the stock is trading at around 50 times forward earnings. That seems far too high given the ongoing supply chain uncertainty.
Raspberry Pi is a stock I might be interested in buying one day when the smoke clears. But right now, I see more attractive opportunities in the FTSE 250 for my portfolio.
