The Raspberry Pi 6 won’t be released before 2028 and won’t feature an onboard NPU to handle AI compute when it does.
Insight into their plans for the Pi 6 and when it’ll arrive were shared by three of the company’s key engineers and leaders in an AMA (ask me anything) session on Reddit on 21 May, 2026.
Based on past launches the gap between major Pi models (Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 4 and 5) is around 3-4 years. The Raspberry Pi 5 launched in 2023. That should put the Pi 6 on course for launch in 2026 or 2027.
But Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton indicated that a Pi 6 won’t be released before early 2028, a delay that is likely related to current industry economics. The Pi 5, even at its currently engorged price point, will remain the flagship SBC for a while longer.
When it does arrive, what can we expect? It won’t be a Pi 6 packed with more ports and a built-in M.2 SSD slot, as Eben says the next-gen model is “likely to have very similar overall features and form factor, but “more” (faster CPUs, I/O, more DRAM bandwidth etc)”.
Scores of newer Raspberry Pi alternatives are equipped with onboard NPUs to handle local, on-device inferencing and processing. There is an expectation the Pi 6 might also include a dedicated AI chip too.
Alas, not.
Eben was asked on the company’s plans for “edge AI beyond camera inference”, and replied:
“We’re big believers in the CPU as the venue for much edge AI compute. Over time the CPUs become faster, and the algorithms become cheaper, so investing area in “fungible” rather than “fixed-function” compute has always been a good bet”.
In response to another question on AI workloads on Raspberry Pi devices he added that “…the best way to democratize AI is to give people fast, affordable CPUs”.
Raspberry Pi makes their own Hailo-based AI HATs for vision inferencing on the Pi 5. From the AMA it seems CPU + accelerator add-ons remains the play, with the expectation that accelerators will become better suited to general-purpose algorithms in future revisions.
While it may be a longer wait for the Pi 6, it doesn’t mean development has stalled elsewhere.
During the same AMA, the team touched on the scale of their microcontroller business (shipments overtook SBC sales last year), and addressed component shortages affecting Pi Zero 2 W (and the pricing challenges holding back an anticipated successor).