As somebody with very little understanding of the business world: why would a seemingly successful organisation like this become a public company? What benefits are there?
It allows the company to raise money and existing shareholders to cash out or at least to turn their shares into liquid ones (that they can sell easily), with a "real" market value.
In this case, the article says that they've raised $200 million, which means they sold new shares as part of the IPO.
Funding is one reason but the real one a lot of times is you hit hard legal limits on how many people are on your cap table before it’s just easier to go public. Meaning if you want to keep giving equity to employees you are almost forced to go public.
I wonder what the impact would be to us (consumers) if there would be pressure from shareholders to increase profits. Will future Raspberry Pies be completely bare-bones unless you pay a hefty premium?
Either prices start to increase, product quality lowers or the end-users will become the product. Or maybe all of them. Or maybe nothing changes, but unfortunately history proves otherwise.