Berlin-based hard- and software company Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency according to official documents.
Nick Williams, CEO of Native Instruments, just shared an official statement, saying that the business and operation continue as usual.
I want to personally take a moment to address the recent news about Native Instruments.
Please rest assured that business continues as usual at Native Instruments, iZotope, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx. Our hardware and software products remain on sale and available for download and activation. Our passionate and dedicated teams are here and supporting customers as normal. In product and engineering, we are continuing to develop and launch new products and features. Our NKS Partnerships team continues to process Kontakt Player licences and NKS Partner submissions.
We are working diligently and responsibly to secure a healthy, financially sustainable future for Native Instruments. As you may have seen, Native Instruments GmbH has entered a restructuring process in Germany, as have 3 of our German non-operating holding companies. In legal terms, we have filed applications to open pre-insolvency proceedings for those companies.
We are focused on providing continuity for creators, customers, and partners. We’ll continue to share updates as we have them.
I’m a lifelong musician myself, and have been a passionate fan of Native Instruments for 25 years. Our mission to inspire and enable creators to express themselves through sound continues.
I will inform you if there is any news.
Update from January 28, 2026
There is an update regarding the Native Instruments preliminary insolvency: Via the Plugin Alliance Audiophiles Facebook page, a spokesperson for Plugin Alliance says that they are not part of this.
” as of today, Plugin Alliance entities are not part of the insolvency filing. Our operators in Langenfeld and the US remain outside these proceedings. For now, it’s business as usual. We continue to operate normally – product releases, support, installers, and all other activities continue unchanged.
We’ll share further updates as the situation develops. I hope this helps – we remain dedicated to our partners and customers!”
More information will follow when there is news.
Article from January 27, 2026
The Berlin-based company Native Instruments has been embroiled in significant turmoil over the past five years. First, the investment firm Francisco Partners came on board. Then came Soundwide, a merger of NI, iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx.
Then, a complete reversal of the situation, reverting to Native Instruments. It seems it’s all become too much now. According to official documents from the Berlin authorities, Native Instruments is in a preliminary insolvency proceeding. CDM reports exclusively.
Native Instruments GmBH Insolvency?!
The news is really taking off now, and if this is true, it would be a huge bombshell for the music tech scene. According to official insolvency documents, Berlin-based Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency proceedings.
This includes not only Native Instruments but also the parent companies iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx. If they all disappear in one fell swoop, that would be devastating news for the music tech scene.
According to Peter Kirn of CDM, Prof. Dr. Torsten Martini is listed as a preliminary insolvency administrator for the company, which will be responsible for restructuring the company.
Normally, these people try to find solutions, including finding other companies that buy parts of the business to raise new money to rescue it. In many cases, this turns out positively; in others, it doesn’t.
Since we don’t know how high Native Instruments’ debts are and what’s going on behind the scenes… It’s difficult to see how likely it is that Native Instruments will be saved.
Acquisition By Bridgepoint & Bain Capital Credit?
There is an update on Native Instruments’ preliminary insolvency
According to the news, the European Commission has cleared the acquisition of the Native Instruments Group by UK-based Bridgepoint Group Holdings Limited (Bridgepoint) and Bain Capital Credit. This was announced at the end of 2025.
Thanks to a comment: Bain Capital Credit was the investor company that bought Guitar Center. We don’t yet know for sure if the purchase went through. One thing is sure: this happened in late 2025.
Update (2): It seems this deal has fallen through
They write on the official page
The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of joint control of Native Instruments Group GmbH of Germany by Bridgepoint Group Holdings Limited (‘Bridgepoint’) of the UK and Bain Capital Credit L.P. of the US.
The transaction relates primarily to the market for software and hardware tools for music production.
The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given that the companies are not active in the same or vertically related markets. The notified transaction was examined under the simplified merger review procedure.
New owners, new hope? We don’t know. So many unanswered questions for now. But still strange that Native Instruments is now in a preliminary insolvency. Stay tuned for more info.
Something that was to be expected? (Personal Impression)
Looking at recent years, this news isn’t all that surprising. I’ve been working with Native Instruments professionally for many years, and I talk to many colleagues, and we’re all sure that Native Instruments will face a very difficult future.
They developed and spent money without considering their core customer and community. I also wrote an article about it in 2024.
Massive X, Absynth 5 discontinuation, Sounds.com failure, the chaos surrounding the companies (Soundwide then NI…), endless sample libraries, but no innovation, etc. These are points where customers lost interest and trust in them.
Recently, however, more has been done to regain it, including Absynth 6, updates for Maschine+, MIDI controllers, etc. But that doesn’t seem to have helped much.
If Native Instruments were to break up, it would cause significant upheaval in the MI industry. More importantly, it will also be a difficult situation for employees and others. They should be supported in the short term, but what’s after that period?
I will contact Native Instruments to request a statement regarding this news. I will keep you updated.
So it could go like, Akai takes over NI. iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx go to…..?
I think music industry will be fine with or without NI
I don’t think so… the music industry is sadly crumbling my friend. Artists are making no money from sales and very little from streams… they are forced to play the social media game but they get little to no traction…thousands and thousands of tracks get released daily, a lot of plugin companies are starting to adopt a rental model instead of owning plugins *why? if artists are making no money out of music how can they afford their plugins?… propellerhead (reason) has been bought up…. big artist are complaining on social media that the can’t make the money.. Ai taking over media with Suno, need I say more? influencers are taking over real producers and djs and replacing them with looks and status while regurgitating the same commercial crap….Aphex Twin? Would not break through now for example…..
I am certain that more than 90% of NI’s and other music tech brand’s customers are not part of the music industry, but hobbyists that make music for fun. So while you are correct about the desolate state of the music industry (which the tech giants and streaming companies are to blame for), I’m not sure it affects music tech companies that much.
That would be the saddest news. My favorite company. Hope they cope.
I think this is a hoax.
no it isn’t
👎
Always waaaaaay too expensive, we’re talking Waves expensive.
Subscriptions don’t work, industry is bloated with them.
The days of asking $500+ for a DAW, effect or softsynth are looong dead.
Every black Friday I get an excellent deal for Arturia’s products, so I keep coming back.
NI never learned.
What are you talking about? They have sales all the time. Also what DAW do they sell for $500? None of your post makes any sense my man.
Not a DAW but some of their packages are thousands of dollars and yet offer only marginal difference to similar pakages by the likes of Arturia, also most modern DAWS include several synths, samplers effects with large libraries, you have to take the whole value proposition into account, and when you do NI come up short.
Logic is $200, free updates forever and a massive library.
NI no longer makes sense.
Every year NI offers Komplete for a pittance. I have bought them and their upgrades for years.
Totally agree. NI put their software on sale, but you need their extremely expensive hardware to take advantage of it. Unsurprisingly, that never goes on sale!
I own Komplete 14 Ultimate. I wasted so much time on software updates, troubleshooting and compatibility checks. Then one day, they decided not to support my hardware any more! My S61 Mk 1 still functions, but only if I use it with KK 2.9.6 software, which doesn’t work well on modern macOS. I’m so glad now that I resisted the £700 upgrade to a new S61 keyboard. It’s an outrageous price.
I agree .Someone there had/has horrendous guidance. For a while I had all NI hardware products at once and it was great but then they started to EOL stuff too quick, killing hardware thru software (Maschine MK2 and Kontrol MK1), too many controllers like S5 killed quick, tech support took months to get a hold of, new stuff in Komplete was just sample libraries, product keys dead in service center that did not carry over Native Access, native Access was horrible too… while at the same time other companies just came up with better stuff, better support, more original ideas… Open source your old hardware and forever the software for people who bought it. Sorry for the employees but zero sympathy for the leadership.
is it my fault because i pirated reaktor back in the early 2000s? oh and absynth too. my bad. in my defense i did buy them in the early 2010s though… im sorry :'(
It’s okay, you’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again. 😆
This is some wild news… They’re almost too big to fail, right? Wonder what will happen to everybody making money off Kontakt libraries.
Great, Bain Capital. The very same that bought Guitar Center. Not like they were amazing pre-buyout, but it’s easy to see what Bain did to them.
Interesting interview on Produce Like A Pro channel between Dirk Ulrich and Warren Huart at Namm last week where Dirk was very scathing about how things were being run at NI by the bankers. If acquisition falls through would be good to see Dirk buy it all via his Rockforce Group.
Since they abruptly cut off Super 8 and moved it into Reaktor, and the sell Super 8 as a separate item we couldn’t access – What was they thinking – I was in the finishing phase of an album release when all my synth basses made in Super 8 all went .. boom – I had to replace everything. Sent a complaint, wrote an article .. I just went through all NI related stuff I have. If they go down, they should grant every owner of a bought product a lifetime license that doesn’t need online confirmations all the time.
Super 8 has always been a Reaktor instrument. What happened was that NI planned to turn some Reaktor-dependent instruments into Reaktor-independent standalone VSTs/AUs and Super 8 (R2) was a testbed for that. But because it did not sell well, NI decided to ditch those plans and re-focused on Reaktor. Unless you are on a Mac, you can still use the VST version without issues.
I am a Mac user, but I ditched everything NI except from the defendant Kontakt instruments. We can’t have a company changing the entire structure of e.g Super 8 like NI did .. It ruined a great synth bass I used on most tracks on the album I had to postpone to find alternatives.
I am not sure i am fine with this machine plus made me think everything was fine. I personally had only bought student software I actually am very uncomfortable I need more updates for machine plus
Lession 1: Always prefer standalone hardware that doesn’t require any online connection, updates or software partner app.
Lession 2: Software has a much shorter lifespan than hardware and is easily rendered worthless
Sure, you are right! On the other hand though, I would sell all of my hardware synths and modular stuff before I sell MASCHINE Studio, KK Mk1 and KORE.
Yes and no. Just buy software that doesn’t have crazy things like challenge response or have to phone home etc. I learned over the years the hard way like others where I’d buy something and then the company stopped supporting it. You get an OS upgrade and it no longer works. That’s a great argument for hardware.
On the other hand I’m on Linux now and I only buy things that don’t have those things. U–he’s new license key would allow you to keep using their software even if they disappeared. Granted at some point you may not be able to run it on some future platform.
Younglings, let me tell you the saga of Kore, and why I have never gone near their hardware since. They cannot be trusted.
This really sucks for Maschine owners, they are eventually going to have some very expensive bricks…
In 2020 Brainworx took over the legacy of PPG legend Wolfgang Palm. Since then nothing happened with the virtual synths Wolfgang had commercialised. If indeed Brainworx sinks together with NI into Bankruptcy, that legacy might be lost forever. And that would be a true pity
The downfall started with Kore and was finally completed by lousy hip-hop romplers and creepy vocal instruments that feel like they were made exclusively to score films like Eyes Wide Shut.
Back in the good old days, you could actually talk to the developers on the support hotline. Later on, it was nothing but clueless students telling me I was too stupid to update my products via Native Access (the real nail in the coffin — what an utterly nightmarish piece of software), even though Native Instruments themselves had to provide a separate tool just to deregister products so updates would work at all.
Arturia and UVI Falcon pulled me out of that pit of despair, and I no longer need anything from Native Instruments. They have no one to blame but themselves.
And let’s not forget that at some point Komplete Kontrol simply removed a plug-in from the VST interface (VST 2.4? VST3? Who knows…). The result: I now have around 50 songs sitting on my drive that no longer load any Komplete Kontrol instruments.
So yes — those songs are effectively destroyed.
I’ll bet all the talented people are already looking for other opportunities or have already left this sinking ship.
The only way NI will survive is without all the other bs and run by a company that actually cares. And I’m not sure that will happen. Hope I’m wrong.