Glad to see the gouging finally come to an end!
Of course, that's not what I expected since I'd been personally affected by the shortage to retail, and because the others weren't aware of that, I probably looked worried over nothing when I suggested we explore other SBCs.
This was also two years ago, although we've been able to get more from them since, so I'd recommend calling companies that have any kits or products that include pis and asking them for info on ordering. If you have a procurement office or purchaser, they can help.
You'll have to forgive me for not wanting to threaten our golden goose just yet :)
> We worked on a project in 2021 where we needed around 150 and had no problem sourcing
We had minor sourcing difficulties ordering much fewer for production (10-15).
Basically: greed (lower overhead from larger orders) and more greed (chasing large companies, I guess in the hopes of securing fat, profitable long term contracts, or maybe donations, or both) and probably trying to cut out distributors, too (the "email us and we'll work something out" he kept telling everyone), again because of greed.
Raspberry Pi foundation burned their brand image and good will to the ground. Everyone has moved on to using clones, other ARM devices, embedded systems that have AI accelerators, old PCs and laptops, ESP32's, and so on.
Half the shit people were doing with Rpis were better suited for things like ESP32's anyway.
These were not "the largest companies" by any metric. They were often orders of just tens or hundreds of units. It was absolutely about trying to keep commercial users who had locked into the Pi ecosystem viable during the supply chain disruption.
Supply was allocated to businesses, but there was not enough for every business, so quite many of them could not buy Raspberry Pis for their products.
Then again, everyone was having major supply issues. Yes, you could pivot from the "hobby" R. Pi to a "serious" industrial brand that had sales people talk big words about how they don't have these "beginner player" issues - right up to when it was time to deliver and suddenly they start talking about 100+ week lead times and 2025 delivery dates...
The Pi Foundation decided to help those people keep their jobs during COVID etc which seems to be the clear moral choice.
Right now it's basically supporting the old systems to keep those at least running.