OpenClaw AI fuels the Raspberry Pi rollercoaster share price — The 'Mac Mini Effect' comes for the maker's SBC
The Raspberry Pi share price has risen sharply in recent days and it seems that AI is behind this while also fueling many to make large share purchases.
The Raspberry Pi stock price has seen a surge this week, and it seems that the "Apple Mac Mini" effect, where everyone hoarded Apple's tiny PCs to run their own local AI service has finally reached the beloved single board computer.
Fun Trade Idea: Long $RPI (Raspberry Pi)
— Serenity (@aleabitoreddit) February 16, 2026
Reason: 🦞 Openclaw / Picoclaw / Nanobot + Hoarding.
Everyone has been openly hoarding Apple Mac Minis and were long Apple.
But $APPL is already a $3.7T+ company. Product mass-buying won't make a dent.
Raspberry Pi, however, is a… https://t.co/yRKh37HQ5n pic.twitter.com/IH8wXsCctW
The catalyst for this situation seems to be a "Fun Trade Idea" post from X user "aleabitoreddit" . This post has kickstarted the interest in running Openclaw / Picoclaw on a Raspberry Pi, resulting in enthusiasts buying and building their own rigs using Raspberry Pi hardware. All of this has seemingly pushed Raspberry Pi's share price to hit 545.5p on Wednesday 18 February, with it ultimately closing the day at 410p. Despite Raspberry Pi's recent price increases, they are still cheaper than a Mac Mini, but not as powerful.
The Rollercoaster Raspberry Pi Share Price
Source:London Stock Exchange
It seems that Raspberry Pi's stock price has been on a bit of a rollercoaster lately. At the time of writing (Feb 19) the price hit 408.76, but just two weeks ago (Feb 4) the price was 257.20. That's a 45.5% increase in price. So what's happened between these dates to drive up the price of Raspberry Pi stock? Has there been a new release? No. New software? No. So what was it? The answer could be Artificial Intelligence, AI. But lets take a look at the value of Raspberry Pi shares.
Monthly Value
Source:London Stock Exchange
With a monthly value of £56.14 million, February 2026 is the best month for Raspberry Pi since September 2025, where it hit £49.14 million. The next best month was March 2025, £47.18 million.
Daily Value
Source:London Stock Exchange
The daily value sees the rollercoaster riding upwards. February 18 2026 saw the value rise to £22.56 million. February 17 was £17.96 million, and Febraury 16 "just" £3.65 million.
Now, let this sink in. The daily value for Raspberry Pi on Febraury 18 2026 was £22.56 million, just under half the monthly value for September 2025.
In recent days there has been a large number of trades, and that includes Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton. This isn't unusual nor is it illegal. As a senior position in Raspberry Pi LTD, Upton has to follow strict rules and all of the transactions are reported, and publicly available via the London Stock Exchange website.
Lets take a look at the details.
| Purchase Date | Purchased By | Share Price | Volume | Total | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16/2/2026 | Eben Upton | £2.82327 | 4,684 | £13,224.197 | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/RPI/pdmr-share-purchase/17463509 |
| 11/2/2026 | Eben Upton | £2.6212 | 7,589 | £19,892.44 | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/RPI/pdmr-share-purchase/17457298 |
| 9/2/2026 | Eben Upton | £2.66 | 7,468 | ||
| £2.62 | 7,604 | ||||
| Total | 15,072 | £39,787.22 | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/RPI/pdmr-purchase-of-shares/17452945 | ||
| 4/2/2026 | Eben Upton | £2.62 | 7,600 | ||
| £2.58 | 7,714 | ||||
| Total | 15,314 | £39,814.12 | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/RPI/pdmr-purchase-of-shares/17446574 | ||
| 30/1/2026 | Eben Upton | £2.71 | 7,341 | £19,894.11 | https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/RPI/purchase-of-shares/17439185 |
For all of the purchases, a PDMR (Person Discharging Managerial Responsibilities) was filed for the purchase of shares. This is a normal, regulatory practice and is necessary for an individual who has a senior position in a publicly listed company. A PDMR is used to ensure that no insider trading takes place, and all trades are reported to the company and the regulator. Hence we see the transaction are all linked to Upton, because he legally has to report his purchases. Other purchases, by the public or less senior individuals at Raspberry Pi, do not have to be reported as strictly. The sales are all logged, but not accessible via a PDMR.
Since January 30 (the date of the PDMR, but the purchase was on January 29), Upton has purchased 80,386 shares in total, and paid £132,612.087 for all of those shares. That is a lot of money and the PDMR means that the public can see these purchases, and when the CEO of a company makes a purchase the market is sure to catch wind of it and want in on the action. Looking through the trades for February 19, in the first three hours of trading there have been 606,899 shares purchased, at an aggregated value of £2,485,147.34p. This imposing figure towers over Upton's purchases. But the question still remains, "Why has the Raspberry Pi share price risen so sharply?"
The claws of AI grab a piece of the Pi
There is no escaping AI, it seems to be everywhere and there are even specific AI add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi made by Haileo which use its custom NPU (Neural Processing Unit) to off-load work from the Raspberry Pi 5's quad-core Arm CPU. And this is where things get interesting. As most of us are already aware, the price of RAM, CPUs, SSDs (storage in general) and GPUs has sky-rocketed in the last six months. Date centres and manufacturers are stockpiling hardware like the entire world did with toilet paper during the Covid pandemic. They are doing that for a possible future where more AI processing power is required, and AI customers are now a priority as they buy in bulk! This ultimately means that lower spec hardware, like the Raspberry Pi becomes the next target for AI enthusiasts.
The Raspberry Pi 5 — which comes with 1,2,4,8 or 16GB RAM configurations — has a Broadcom BCM2712 System on Chip (SoC) that is powered by an Arm Cortex A76, quad-core, 64-bit CPU running at 2.4GHz that can be easily overclocked to 3GHz. That is plenty of power for a small server and despite the horrendous price increases (again thanks to AI) they are a cost-effective alternative to Apple hardware.
Could older Raspberry Pi hardware be used? Upton has spoken to Bloomberg regarding the raised share price and also commented that he understands that interested parties are testing older models of Raspberry Pi to see where the performance drops off.
What is OpenClaw?
Formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, OpenClaw is an autonomous, local AI agent and personal assistant that can be used with WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack and other service. It is proactive, and can look into your inbox, summarise your messages and even interact with smart home devices. Released in November 2025, OpenClaw has seen rapid growth in January 2026, with many enthusiasts purchasing Apple Mac Minis to run more powerful OpenClaw instances. Now it seems that their lust for AI-powered perfection is driving the rollercoaster share price of Raspberry Pi.
The Rising Price of Raspberry Pi
| Model | February 2026 Price | December 2025 Price | Original Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 5 1GB | No change | No change | $45 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 2GB | $65 | $55 | $50 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 4GB | $85 | $70 | $60 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 8GB | $125 | $95 | $80 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 16GB | $205 | $145 | $120 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 4GB | $75 (based on table in blog post) | $60 | $55 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 8GB | $115 (based on table in blog post) | $85 | $75 |
| Raspberry Pi 500 (8GB) | $119 | $99 | $90 |
| Raspberry Pi 500+ 16GB (MicroCenter) | $259 | $180 | $180 |
| Raspberry Pi 400 | No change | No change | $59 |
The Raspberry Pi is not immune to the rising price of RAM, in the last few months, the price has risen twice, with the price of the Raspberry Pi 5 16GB rising from $120 to $205! Raspberry Pi has also issued a number of PCN (Product Change Notifications) for the Raspberry Pi 5 and the older flagship Raspberry Pi 4.
PCN 46: Pi 5 Alternative sources of RAM PDF
PCN 30: Pi 4 Alternative sources of RAM PDF
The popularity of the Raspberry Pi for AI projects could see the prices further rise as demand increases. Could we see demand exceed supply? Maybe. The Covid pandemic saw demand soar as the world closed down. This drove up the price and made Raspberry Pi a hot commodity, the same could happen again because of AI.
Main image sourced from pexels.com
Please note that this post should not be used to determine financial decisions, I am a keen tech journalist who wanted to examine the situation and have no specialism in finance. Don't risk your money based on my writing.