According to a “The Times” article, ROLI is facing serious financial difficulties for the second time and fighting to avoid a second collapse.
Having an innovative idea like the Seaboard doesn’t automatically get you a sustainable business. ROLI has experienced this firsthand in recent years.
The British company, led by CEO Roland Oliver Lamb, filed for bankruptcy in September 2021 and relaunched as a beginner-focused company, Luminary.
Products like the Piano and Piano M followed, targeting a different market. New products, but ROLI’s financial problems have returned, and things aren’t looking good for them.
ROLI Financial Difficulties
ROLI is a London-based music technology company founded by Roland Lamb and Corey Harrower, famous for creating expressive, touch-sensitive electronic instruments like the Seaboard and LUMI Keys.
It was funded by prominent venture capital firms and strategic investors, including Balderton Capital, Foundry Group, and Universal Music Group. On top of that, musicians like Pharrell Williams and Grimes supported the company.
They raised over $75 million across its lifetime before the first restructuring in 2021. However, the good, healthy times at ROLI are long gone. Not just since this afternoon, but since 2021 when the company was rebuilt under the Luminary brand.
According to The Times report from July 10th, 2026, ROLI is in bad shape for a second time.
They write that TriplePoint (one of the brands that gave venture capital) filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators in early July. They also write that ROLI is working to restructure its finances in an effort to avoid a second insolvency.
New CEO
ROLI itself is not providing any information about the current financial situation, but there are clear indications that things are not going well.
Visiting their website displays the message in red: “We’re currently undergoing site maintenance. Please check back later.” If you look further, you’ll notice that all products are out of stock, even software.
Customers are also reporting that they haven’t received goods they ordered months ago.
And there will be a new CEO, or is already. A look at the “Companies House” (British register of companies) reveals that Roland Oliver Lamb is no longer CEO of ROLI. The information was released on July 3rd, but the termination had already taken place on April, 23, 2026.
A company undergoing restructuring to avoid a second bankruptcy, with no products available and the CEO gone. Yes, we certainly say they are in serious trouble.
My Two Pennies
Does that surprise me? Not really. Expectations too high, too expensive, and it missed the mark with the market. That’s one way to explain ROLI’s failure. Their position is also a key issue.
ROLI never wanted to be seen as a small player. They wanted to swim with the big fish right on day one. To be the Apple of the music tech world. Big marketing campaigns, big rooms on NAMM… This led to their first bankruptcy, and they’re on the verge of it again.
They wend straight to bed with the devil, aka venture capitalists, early on and raised a lot of money. Part of this flowed into the development of products that were original and innovative. But never lived up to the venture capital firms’ high expectations.
This was also noted by the British insolvency administrator in 2021. They made pricey stuff for a music niche, not for a mass market. The big money principle didn’t work with ROLI.
And since their relaunch in 2021, they’ve been trying to do different things by entering the beginner-friendly market. Again, with products that are perhaps too high-tech and nerdy (Airwave) and expensive for the mass market. They’ve had a tough time, but mistakes have plagued their entire company history.
To be honest, I would be happy if ROLI were acquired by another company and could refocus on MPE instead of chasing after the big fish they can’t reach anyway.
I’ll keep an eye on how this all develops and whether ROLI can continue the business with the current financial situation or not.
More information here: ROLI
Source: The Times
Well I am sure if they will have strong ethics and pay all their suppliers and reimburse … oh wait.
Roland Oliver Lamb is not a serious person. Technical brilliance does not automatically confer business acumen, strategic judgement, or ethical leadership. Under his leadership, the company burned through well over £60 million and still required a major cash injection before ultimately restructuring. This is, technically, the third time. That is not a success story; it is a warning sign.
If Oliver remains involved, the identity of the CEO is largely irrelevant. When the same individual sits at the centre of repeated failures, changing titles and executives becomes little more than an exercise in optics.
Wow. Burned through $75 million. I’d like to feel more sympathetic to their troubles but as soon as I read “venture capitalists” I feel quite the opposite.
i ordered piano m and seaboard m (advertised as shipping that month) and was told they’d take many extra months to ship so I cancelled. they did refund me but obviously something is wrong.
What a mess. It’s a pity because the product is actually good and innovative in many respects. It just sounds like very bad management of financial resources.
Will InMusic take them over? Lol
The problem too is that you have to go through their software to make the Roli piano and airwave work isn’t it? (Unless I’m mistaken) so if product can’t be updated I’m afraid mine might turn into paperweights?
I bought a Roli for my nephew and the order stayed fulfilled for months but nothing shipped. Did a ticket and nobody responded. Just cancelled and a few days later someone contacted me from there that the order ended up in a queue, inbox or something that no one monitors. Really? I for sure dodged a bullet.
Bummer the 88 key disappeared.
As my primary job involves helping organizations innovate, product innovation is only one kind of innovation. The product needs to have a value proposition and if that value proposition is something that many potential customers want then it can scale. It appears they assumed it would scale rather than actually trying to understand the potential market size. They sold the VCs on this assumption and the rightfully made demands to take actions to increase sales that probably would never come.
There’s a great case study in here about not understanding how applicable your value proposition is to a specific market’s demographics.
If you buy a good quality actual musical instrument, with basic maintenance, it could last for generations. My experience with electronic/digital hardware instruments has been the opposite, e.g. the Sensai MPE keyboard, canceled as a product a year after I bought it. NI is another example..And don’t forget music software. I’m afraid to buy any of this stuff now, because I can’t know if it will be supported for any length of time. Computer OS updates are another whole issue. VCs and private equity buying into the music realm is killing it. As consumers of this stuff, what can we do?
We can use common sense and not feed the monster.
An absolute sh*tshow. All of their customers have been left hanging since the start of july with no interaction on the roli reddit and none on the discord. Their website has effectively shut down. An absolute and total mess. Thanks very much roli.
This makes me sad and it sounds like the founder is a thrice-over business disaster.
Before this latest iteration, they had a beautiful small suite of products with the MPE keyboards, and the magnetically connecting x-y pads and mini control blocks. They worked beautifully together, and their flagship software (equator) was really decent. Had they focused on that at proper scale, they would be a huge player in that smaller space. All of the crap since — piano m and airwave — didn’t make sense…especially if they were after massive sales and growth.
I sincerely hope InMusic buys their IP, ditches the latest stuff and keeps the seaboard m and a;so brings back the blocks. That would actually be a nice addition to their portfolio as I believe it fills a hole they have.
You can tell a lot about a company by its support. I am sad to say that when I stopped receiving replies and coherent correspondence, I sensed something was up. A worse sign still was the lack of new sound banks being released for the ROLI Equator ecosystem. There used to be scads of these, and they were all pretty much excellent. They could still be played, and I hope that Equator will continue to work even if it’s not updated.
I think lessons can be learned here as well in hindsight, but we contrast with Expressive E and what they’re doing with having the Osmose succeed. Maybe it’s the more familiar keyboard layout and their sales channels, but I know that ROLI did do some very cool and fun things with education and entry-level projects. There have been many corpses on the MPE battlefield, make no mistake, but even with the ventures that have failed, we’ve gotten MPE further. For that, I am very full of gratefulness.
Running a sustainable business is the same in any industry, and it’s hard. For the ones that survive and even thrive, the odds are never in your favor, but sometimes you crack through and make a product that changes the world.
Last email I got said…
“Your order has completed production, left the factory, and is currently in transit, however it has been held up during the handover to our new freight forwarder.”
This was early July; silence since then.
Wondering where that leaves me. Will whoever has it eventually ship it?
Whenever I felt the desire to get onboard with them, I’d look at the site and you’d be waiting for whenever to get the thing. Rarely was anything in stock.
I think that alone will have meant a lot of folks simply didn’t bother – true for me anyways
Such a shame, the SB2 looks great etc, but I know my mate had to return his. He went in the end with an Erae 2 but I’ve not heard if he was satisfied with it.
Definitely disappointing to hear. They make some cool products (I have a Seaboard 2, and was considering getting the Airwave) … would love to see their continued availability.
let me flip it – think of the venture capitalists who LOST $75m!! are people really blaming the victim here?
but more seriously, VC is a “go big or go home” game. Roland convinced the investor there is a huge opportunity with MPE, for famous musicians on board and used the cash to manufacture what I think, are rather fine products. they were even sold at the Apple store.
but unfortunately, the market is just too small to justify the investment. so investors lost their money, suppliers lost money, employees lost job, and customers lost future support. no one is a winner in this game. the pivot to a mass market consumer product was a hail marry. I think only Simply Piano managed to really crack this market , and after many years or trying.
I think Osmose is a good case study – to me it seems they are doing things in a slow and measured way that seems to work. but I don’t know their financials…
Agreed.
Since Continuums (46 or 70) are totally niche & handmade by i think just the one guy – therefore prohibitively expensive – Osmose has appealed because it’s that little more “trad”. The fact that they also listened and delivered a controller variant is incredible too. Very sound business model.
The benefits of Seaboard are clear as a continuum adjacent surface, so it’s an incredible shame that it’s been stymied by the company’s way of working. Its slim profile to me made it super slick and yeah, “Apple-like”.
I would have liked to have seen it licensed to a more mainstream maker, but life’s not like that!
Sell the concept, most probably really cheap as it seems now, to InMusic and have them figure out the business model, that’s something they excel in and the Seaboard is a GREAT piece of controller, but seems to needs a clear product market and life strategy.
This does not cover enough of how many of us have not received items bought LAST YEAR.
There are hundreds of people who have not received their products. Not to mention how they strung us along, saying it was in transit, that it was still shipping, or stuck in the port.
Sad. I love playing with my roli block. Is a great tool and you can even tinker with it with open source code.