Raspberry Pi has announced $5 price increases for the 4GB Compute Module 4/5, as well as a $10 increase for the 8GB Compute Module 4/5. It has also put the price of the Raspberry Pi 500 (unit only) up by $10 and the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for Compute Module 5 by $5. Notably, the price increase for the Compute Module 4 variants is a direct reversal of a price cut made earlier this year.
Some of the older Raspberry Pi products have seen price adjustments, too; the Raspberry Pi 3B+ has increased by $5, while the Compute Module 1 has decreased in price by $5, thanks to structural changes. Raspberry Pi has not adjusted the prices of its 1GB and 2GB products, as well as most classic Raspberry Pi products, including the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.
The central cause of the price increases has been the “insatiable” demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI applications. The HBM demand is competing for fab space with the commodity LPDDR memory used in Raspberry Pi devices, pushing prices up about 120% compared to a year ago. Raspberry Pi said only high-density products (4GB/8GB) are seeing price hikes; the impact is less pronounced on 1GB and 2GB products.
Raspberry Pi said that it has attempted to protect the current price level of the Raspberry Pi 500 kit, keeping it at $120. To achieve this, the company has to accept a heavily reduced margin. Despite this bad news, the company is hoping for a reversal, saying it “look[s] forward to reversing them once memory prices return to their long-term downward trajectory.” It believes these changes will be temporary.
Given the comments responding to the announcement, people seem to think these updates are understandable against the backdrop of rising memory costs. These changes will also have a bigger impact on commercial clients who have deeper products, as tinkerers will likely be able to get away with less memory. Hopefully, things will reverse soon.