Will iZotope sink with them?

 

I seriously doubt it. NI and Izotope are strong brands, they'll most likely get absorbed by someone like Adobe.

 

While sad, interesting stuff to know. Seems to be the case

 

Or Apple

 

They were one of the first companies to embrace the soft synth concept: They almost invented it.

This was one of the oldest companies (with Steinberg?) in the computer music industry.

This is almost unbelievable and it doesn't look good for the other (smaller?) players.

 

Sadly, this is possible.
And they might do to NI what they did to Logic after buying emagic.

 

Native Instruments GmbH is preliminary insolvency; possible acquisition? January 27, 2026

Berlin-based hard- and software company Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency according to official documents.
Updated

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.

Source: https://synthanatomy.com/2026/01/na...ry-insolvency-according-to-official-docs.html

 

This is incredibly sad news, those three companies hold a lot of very important software and even hardware. They already had a pretty bad track record with buggy releases, so depending on who ends up acquiring those companies, there's a chance it will get worse.

Kontakt dies, and we're set back in time immediately with developers scrambling to port their old libraries and switch development to other samplers, with probably tons of developers also going bankrupt due to the amount of work this could take. Plugin Alliance dies, and we lose lots of great plugins that even top engineers in the industry use. iZotope dies, and we lose some of the most important algorithm ever coded, and also some of the biggest plugins in the market. Everyone loses if they go down.

 

That has been possible for Apple all along, with way more valuable companies. They have roughly $50 billion, with a B, in cash on hand. The idea that Apple would buy a company like Native Instruments only to kill off products for 60–70% of the acquired company’s Windows user customer base is fantasyland.

That move did make sense with Logic, because Logic’s entire purpose was to sell more Macs by having their own pro DAW. And it’s not some Murder She Wrote mystery how that played out, the Windows version of Logic was dead the minute Apple bought Emagic. Also, Logic is now light years better software than it ever was prior to Apple's acquisition of Emagic.

Buying NI would be almost the exact opposite situation: NI’s actual value depends on Windows and users of other DAWs. Apple has never been interested in anything but selling more of their own computers. If this was really Apple’s MO, they could have jumped in years ago and bought MAGIX for Sequoia using petty cash and they didn’t.

 

1. buy izotope
2.

 

I'm not remotely convinced. Have you seen how prices have been dropping like a stone right across the market? Sales seen to happen almost every week somewhere. Synths which used to cost $200 now cost $50. The market is completely saturated. Way too many developers for a small market, and people aren't buying. Gonna be a big shakeout, I reckon.

No idea how NI could justify 400 employees. What were all those people doing? Not developing new synths, that's for sure. Sounds like their costs were out of control.

 

LANDR about to swoop in for lunch.

 

Hmmmm... and it is just January 2026.... Well, I'm kinda not suprised... Again to remind from post in Reason thread and Fender studio also, market shares, world situations, etc. From this point, I can predict, verry few will prevail... gruesome situation in all spheres... music is degradated from long ago. Now, theese days Suno, AI, generic repetative tunes, stupid lyrics...
Anyway, when crisis hit, ART (in his coplete form) is first who dies... unfortunately.

But... new renaissance will be born. But not in a few years...

 

your first post this month without the help of AI.

 

Just in case: whose post?

 

Yeahp, i'll agree with that. It's been saturated for years. The too many dev's thing isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the redundancy and the greed are rampant in the tech industry. The fact that the so-called "music industry" is IMO for all intents and purposes, in the shitter, doesn't really help much either.

It's like this with most large corporations. Especially big tech corps. The middle management scene is usually inflated 3-4 times what it needs to be. And all those useless managers of managers of managers are all collecting management level wages/salaries.

To be brutally honest, I've been screwed over too many times by "audio tech" corps to be crying about any of this. Anything I use by NI, izotope, or any of the others will still work fine if the place went bankrupt tomorrow. Thanks to R2R, BobDule, V.R., TCD and the rest of our beloved witches, we have the software that has eternal life.

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2026 at 10:45 PM

Waldorf could step in? Clavia? Korg, Roland? even Arturia ...maybe we should buy them :D

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2026 at 10:26 PM

Dirk Ulrich grabbed his money before all the shit hit the fan.... in a few macOS anything will work, knowing apple how much apple change everything. izotope which i use a lot is widely used by pros. maybe they rebuild the shitty kontakt

 

I have also invested in the Kontrol + Maschine + Komplete + NKS ecosystem. It’s just beautiful and almost ”dawless” when it works, I love it.

I am surprised, but also not hugely surprised. Piracy has always been a huge problem for them. People seem to have also moved on from Maschine to the new Akai MPCs and maybe Elektron. And Arturia, obviously, both software and hardware.