📢 [03/19] An update from Nick Williams, CEO of Native Instruments
Uh oh… 😐
According to an article by Create Digital Music (CDM), Native Instruments is currently undergoing preliminary insolvency proceedings:
To access and read insolvency documents:
*Native Instruments*
💡 What this means
❌ What this doesn't mean
(Snippets taken from Production Expert)
Articles / Timeline of events
Date
News
12-04-2025
The European Commission clears acquisition of Native Instruments Group by Bridgepoint and Bain Capital Credit(Unconfirmed: Deal apparently fell through and the insolvency is the result of that.)
01-27-2026
Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency | CDM
01-28-2026
Plugin Alliance says it is "business as usual" | CDM
01-29-2026
Statement from Nick Williams, CEO of Native Instruments
(Also available on ni-japan.jp)
03-19-2026
An update from Nick Williams, CEO of Native Instruments
I will continuously update this post as we learn more.
As per Jeremy_NI's post:
Any further updates will be shared through our official channels when appropriate.
I want to drop few lines regarding this news. I have invested quite a lot in the NI ecosystem since Maschine is my main production/mixing tool and Traktor helps me out during live events and freestyle contests. I spent a relevant amount of money and time to learn em. Obviously the idea to have them discontinued/buried doesn't make me happy, it would be like starting from scratch.
We must also recognize that there is a certain demand in musical products, even if many of us cannot call themselves "professionals" we still keep buying stuff and stay informed. The amount of usb hardware and standalone hardware out there is insane, lot of synths, groove boxes, samplers etc. get released every month. It's known that some 100k/150k of songs reaches music stores and platforms daily, there is a lot of people behind music.
There is a market, and NI is a known brand, I think some other investor will join and some other asset will be sold to somebody else.
I don’t recall NI ever having a stall at namm tbh , I’ve been following namm for a while , when Roland released the first aira stuff
sad news , I suppose I’ll just have to freeze my music computer in time , at least I won’t have too update my waves plan ever again
I don't think the audio folks panicking over stories like these will ever get old.
Without trying to get anybody in trouble, some nice soul needs to upload all the firmware source files to an external server just in case. F~~k PE, let the community carry on support for the hardware at least.
I'm guessing that we'll see some kind of update from NI management by the end of this week. This kind of thing always requires coordination, lining up of ducks, getting wording correct, treading the fine line between causing panic and not causing panic with written words, and so forth.
But I've also noticed that it is the GMBH part of NI that has filed this paperwork. I was under the impression that most of Native Instruments was now owned as a subsidiary of Francisco Partners and Something-something else. So I don't know what part is filing for insolvency or what that will mean to the bigger picture.
But one thing is for certain. We are in a period of HUGE consolidation in the music instrument and software industry.
The graphic arts and 3D industry went through a similar turbulence a few years back, starting with the loss of TrueSpace, and continuing with the loss of Vue. Vue especially hurt, because that one was used to make a lot of movies, such as the first Avatar (James Cameron) movie, and probably the 2nd and 3rd ones too.
Many major companies have changed hands in recent years, and many more have flat-out gone out of business. In all industries. But this music industry, sized as it currently is, is apparently not sustainable in its present state. So I look for more contraction.
While I hope that NI finds a way through this, I'm not going to fool myself into complacency. It's the path we're on. It's the history in the making. And honestly, since the KK3 launch debacle 3 years ago, a lot of us are holding off our enthusiasm.
Actually, truth be told, I thought we were going down the wrong path when Rig Kontrol and earliler when Kore 2 were ended, but that's just me. Dropping hardware devices just seems to be harsh wetwork to be doing to the customer. But that was under NI Berlin, and now we're (supposedly) in the kinder-gentler era, right?
And sure, we all bought Komplete 15 when it came out, but really, there are more sounds available to us now than we can ever hope to use. And it's taken way too long to fix the issues with KK.
Did NI overreach by trying to put processing into their peripheral controllers? I don't know. Maybe they weren't ready to do it and make money at it. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried anyhow. Or maybe it's about to be a raging success and all they need is another month or two before the world realizes it.
Going forward, I'll look to see/hear/read the comments from NI management. But at this point, "believing" those comments might be another challenge entirely.
Certainly some of the industry must continue to consolidate. And it will. We'll just have to wait and see if Native Instruments is going to be a part of the future. Hey, at least we got Absynth 6 out of the ashes of this fire. And a bunch of stuff is fixed (or at least firmly glued back together) in KK. I'll take that as a W, and I'll still hold out hope for a new Reaktor and a new Battery, even if the latter ends up being Kontakt-based (which would be my guess).
It's all good, and nobody listening to the music is going to go, "Oh, I'm so disappointed that his drum and perc sounds came from Kontakt. I just miss the sonic ambience of the old Battery motif!"
Yeah, nobody cares about that. 😉
"fine line between causing panic and not causing panic"
LOL people are panicking anyway - just look at this thread! 🤣
Let's just hope that the people in charge of NI keep their cool, after all, there are 500 jobs at stake.
This goes to the Traktor developers (team..?). Just in case everything goes wrong, could any of you release de source code of the software? I’m sure the open source community could do wonders with it.
Yes—yes he should. Possibly not the best investment for him, but he’d make us happy!
Another reminder of the risk on taking up a subscription based service by paying for a longer tenure to save some money.
To think that NI spent resources, be it time and/or money to redesign the logos which nobody asked for.
A wait and see should be the wise thing to do now.
Someone mentioned on another forum that Roland would be a good fit. It’s the best acquirer suggestion I’ve heard so far to be honest…..
Poor boy. So tough decisions where to put your millions of $$$.
Probably explains why we never saw a Komplete Kontrol M32 MK2 five years after the MK1 release.
I don't see that as ever going to happen. As far as I know then what you are asking is for someone to take the Intellectual Property and publish it for which they would be sued and punished severely.
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