British computer maker soars on AI ‘meme stock’ craze

Matthew Field

Tue 17 February 2026 at 11:18 pm GMT+9 2 min read

Raspberry Pi is headquartered in Cambridge and manufactures its credit-card sized computers in Wales - Kiraly Zoltan Ladislau / Alamy Stock Photo

A British micro-computer company has been caught up in an AI frenzy amid speculation it will benefit for a boom in the technology.

Raspberry Pi’s stock price has surged 30pc in two days, amid chatter on social media that the company’s tiny computers can be used to power a popular AI chatbot.

Users have turned to Raspberry Pi’s small computers to run a technology known as OpenClaw, a viral AI personal assistant. A flood of posts about the practice have been viewed millions of times since the weekend.

One City source compared to rise in its stock to past “meme stock” surges.

OpenClaw, previously known as Clawdbot, can access people’s WhatsApps, emails, calendars and payment apps, allowing it to complete complex tasks.

The AI agent can be downloaded and customised, and coders have adapted OpenClaw so it can be run efficiently on a small cluster of Raspberry Pi’s tiny computers, which cost as little as £30.

Damindu Jayaweera, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said tech fans were interested in the idea of running a “radically lightweight” AI assistant on “very low-cost hardware”.

“Instead of needing a modern computer, it can run on devices like older Raspberry Pi boards using a fraction of the memory and power,” he said.

He added the stock price surge appeared to have been “largely driven by sentiment from social media.”

On Monday, TickerTrends Research, which analyses viral investment trends, wrote that Raspberry Pi had been enjoying “under-the-radar consumer demand”.

Alex Campbell, a spokesman for retail trading app Freetrade, said: “Orders on our platform increased about 70pc comparing Monday’s buy volume with Friday.”

He added there are now “loads of videos and tutorials” on how to use Raspberry Pi as a “low-cost alternative” for running OpenClaw.

Raspberry Pi, which is headquartered in Cambridge and manufactures its credit-card sized computers in Wales, went public in 2024 at a valuation of £540m.

The company was valued at as much as £1.5bn in early 2025, before slumping to record lows earlier this month. The stock price rise in recent days has seen Rasberry Pi’s value climb to around £700m.

The rally comes despite a wider sell-off in technology stocks. Businesses selling traditional software have seen their valuations plunge on fears they could be made obsolete by a new wave of so-called AI “agents”.

Since launching OpenClaw, its developer, Austrian coder Peter Steinberger, has been hired by ChatGPT giant OpenAI.

Raspberry Pi was contacted for comment.

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