The Rise and Fall of Native Instruments

Native Instruments as a company was founded in 1999 in Berlin, Germany, where its headquarters are still located. Founders Stephan Schmitt and Volker Hinz began using the name Native Instruments in 1996, when they developed Generator, a modular synth software package (which would later form the foundations for their ongoing product, Reaktor).

Following the release of Generator, the company's employees expanded to include Bernd Roggendorf (later a founder of Ableton) and Daniel Haver, who later became Native Instruments' CEO.

In 1999, Native Instruments expanded its staff count and moved to its current building in Berlin's Kreuzberg district.

In 2000, the company began creating products for the DJ community, beginning with the first version of their Traktor software.

In 2002, they expanded further to include software samplers, in the form of ongoing products Kontakt and Battery.

In September 2004, the company began a partnership with the DJ hardware manufacturing company Stanton Magnetics and with online music store Beatport. 2004 also saw the release of their guitar amplifier and effects pedal emulation software, Guitar Rig. In 2006, Native Instruments restructured into 3 divisions: instruments, DJ, and guitar.

In March 2017, Native Instruments acquired remix-licensing startup MetaPop.

In January 2020, a works council was elected that represents the employees of the Berlin office.

In January 2021, it was reported that private investment firm, Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in Native Instruments.
Aside from its German offices in Berlin and Langenfeld, Native Instruments now also has offices in Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Shenzhen.

In April 2022, Native instruments briefly became a subsidiary brand of Soundwide, a parent company created with the backing of Francisco Partners and EMH Partners.

In January 2023, Soundwide laid off 8% of its workforce, citing "challenging market conditions" as the reason. In June of the same year, the Soundwide name was retired and substituted with Native Instruments' own branding, citing familiarity concerns as what led to the change.

On 27 January 2026 it was announced that Native Instruments had entered into preliminary administration proceedings, with the future of the company’s products being uncertain.

 

Any rich superstar music artist gonna buyout the company and keep it afloat for all of us ?????? Trent reznor ??? Hans Zimmer ????

 

Dirk Ulrich walks onto the stage at NAMM.

'Friends, it's been a while... too long in fact!'
The crowd nods in agreement.

'But let's get right to it. I'm excited to share with you that I have reacquired my companies from Native Instruments.'
Surprised murmurs from the crowd.

'Plugin Alliance Mega Sales anyone?! Twelve Brainworx console plugins for the price of two?!'
Mild laughter from the crowd.

'The story doesn't end there though. One more thing, folks. One more thing I'd like to announce. I will also be adding Native Instruments to my portfolio of companies.'
Loud laughter and rejoicing from the crowd.

'That's right. From this day forward, Native Instruments will be a Dirk Ulrich brand.'
The crowd erupts into cheers.

'And I'm relaunching a much improved, brand new, fully reworked Kontakt. This. Autumn.'
The crowd starts roaring.

'With ayyy eyyyeee.'
The crowd immediately falls silent. Isolated sounds of gunshots can be heard.

 

message from plugin alliance GM mo valens i saw on PA's facebook group:

I will tell you what we have told our partners…
The key points:
As of today, Plugin Alliance entities are not part of the insolvency filing. Our operations 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!

 

This is true but for a long time that original NI creativity had died. Still sad.

 

royal family

 

I seen too many obvious errors on their side to be surprised.
Like many abandoned softwares AND hardwares :

1. Discontinued Software

Absynth (Versions 1-5): Once a flagship cinematic synth. NI officially discontinued it in 2022.

B4 / B4 II: A highly acclaimed Hammond organ emulator.

Pro-52 / Pro-53: Emulations of the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5.

FM7: The predecessor to FM8 (modeled after the DX7).

Vokator: A powerful vocoder and granular synthesizer.

NI Spectral Delay: A unique FFT-based delay effect.

Kore / Kore 2: A hardware/software "workstation" system that was replaced by Maschine and Komplete Kontrol.

Bandstand: A general MIDI sample module.

Akoustik Piano / Elektrik Piano: Early dedicated piano libraries (now replaced by the "Definitive Piano Collection").

Spektral Delay: A frequency-domain delay effect.

2. Discontinued Hardware

While some of these still "work" via MIDI, their specialized drivers or software integrations are no longer maintained:

Maschine MK1 & MK2: Software support officially ended in late 2024.

Maschine Mikro MK1 & MK2: Support ended alongside the full-size versions.

Rig Kontrol (1, 2, 3): The foot controllers for older versions of Guitar Rig.

Audio 2 / 4 / 8 DJ: Early Traktor-branded audio interfaces.

Traktor Kontrol S2 / S4 / X1 (MK1): The first generation of Traktor controllers.

Komplete Audio 6 (MK1): Replaced by the MK2 version.

Imagine now how many ppl they left in the dust ...

 

customers with subscription licenses

 

Battery

 

They deserve it. With stupid prices for almost anything, subscription models like $500/year for plugins and sounds that were released 200 years ago and dumb hardware warranty-repair decisions (they asked me $150 to repair a soundcard that was on sale at $149, brand new), they need to go.

Nobody from their company ever thought that a subscription model of $20/month with all their products included is good for business? No? Then go out of business. $2000 Komplete Ultimate/Collector prices are nice for them, but not for not earning money musicians.

 

Whole post interesting but this was a touch of genius:

OMG

 

I might as well comment some technical stuff that was going on in Kontakt before the... ahem... funeral?
Turns out the biggest changes were not the Kontakt 8 new features. To nobody's surprise

The biggest changes undergoing were to make possible resizable libraries GUIs (not Kontakt own GUI). You guys noticed how Lua scripts were introduced to assist library development? It turns out the Kontakt Scripting Processor, Kontakt's own language, is so lame it can't handle resizable GUIs.

So for the now jinxed future, library devs would have to learn KSP for sound/midi stuff and Lua for the GUI. Let that sink in and marinate for a moment. This is no secret, I saw it at a VIs thread. The library devs were not exactly ecstatic in excitement

And I really had to read it twice, because I was like "WTF, you gotta be shitting me dudeeee"

 

I think Kontakt is the only software asset that has enough market potential to find a buyer quickly. All the rest of NI software - not so.

Are you ready for a name change? Fender Kontakt? Akai Kontakt? Arturia Kontakt?

(But I think they will try to sell iZotope and PA first.)

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2026 at 1:45 AM

The entire audio software industry is a bit of a bubble IMO. Its saturated with too many products that pretty much do the same thing.

 

This is why I still use an inline console and have enough hardware I could make do without the computer (and probably be more productive) if it ever went bust..

 

So glad I bought a maschine MK3 2 weeks ago lol... I guess long term I'll have to stick to my MPC

Tbh something like izotope was going in the wrong direction since a while....Bought back exponential audio which had amongs the best verbs on the market (still use my R4) all the products were discontinued...They relaunched stutter edit and trash but it's just a UI change, not much was added, exept CPU use which skyrocketed...

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2026 at 3:22 AM

Native Instruments GmbH is preliminary insolvency: Plugin Alliance is not part of it

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!”

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