The Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 is the official generative AI PCIe add-on for Raspberry Pi 5, released on 15 January 2026. It pairs a Hailo-10H AI accelerator capable of up to 40 TOPS of inference performance (INT4) with 8GB of dedicated on-board LPDDR4X memory, enabling local vision and small generative AI workloads on one of the most popular single-board computers ever made.



This hardware combination is designed to enable efficient on-device generative AI while allowing the AI HAT+ 2 to operate within edge device requirements. These include low power consumption, no cloud connectivity, low latency, and maximum data privacy. However, as with any embedded hardware, performance trade-offs matter: edge devices are limited in memory, compute resources, and power budget (typically single-digit W).

For this reason, generative AI applications that require general world awareness, continuous learning, or conversations based on extensive context and knowledge-heavy reasoning are better suited to run in the cloud. For latency-sensitive, privacy-critical, knowledge-confined applications, the new AI HAT+ 2 is an ideal fit.

Let’s break down when and where the AI HAT+ 2 is most powerful, and why it’s not just another niche gadget.

...read more at raspberrypi.com