Seems Native Instruments is going under/being broken up… sad news…
Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency - CDM Create Digital Music
(Maybe this should be posted in the lounge)
Ouch! That’s some sad news indeed.
I just read about this in SM. Sudden and sad news. I hope this gets resolved in the best way for employees and customers.
Well hopefully they remove the authorization so I can keep using Absynth 6 (or they give it back to Brian finally)
More news… Seems the NI group has already been acquired.?
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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.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pressco … ex_25_2950 (scroll down)
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Well, FWIW that announcement was made on 04 Dec 2025. Now, was that deal ever actually ‘completed’, with all this talk of ‘preliminary insolvency’.?
Someone else reporting the deal (above) has fallen through. And maybe, its likely that insolvency is part of the debt-clearing process the takeover is conditional upon…
For those of you here who can read German, it has been entered into the german insolvency register today.
Sounds like the asset stripping may be about to begin … expect “Fender Kontakt Pro” to be released sometime soon.
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I don’t believe Native Instruments or a successor has a future, and sooner or later all their products will disappear completely from the music production sector. It’s better to prepare for this now.
How?..
Stop buying NI for one… But that disappearing from the market completely is a big chunk to swallow. NKS has been a very popular standard in the industry.
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This will stop the industry in its tracks… virtually nearly everybody uses NI! Damn.
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I guess on the bright side, this could be a big boost for HALion.
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Francisco Partners’ (private equity firm that bought NI in 2021) push for rapid gains likely led to trouble at Native Instruments, with cost-cutting and less focus on long-term growth, which, together with market challenges, resulted in this insolvency.
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I remember that there were already problems with the Kontakt Player in 2021. Since then, I haven’t bought any plug-ins that only run with the Kontakt Player. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s done the same. Sample libraries, loops, etc. are becoming increasingly cheaper or even free. This means that less money can be earned from them.
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Yamaha should buy,
Merge Kontakt into Halion
Well, it’s not the plugins, it’s the libraries that most of them run on Kontakt Player.
Not to mention Plugin Alliance from which I bought plugins that are close to irreplaceable.
Will have to switch, but to what cost? Professionals will be hit hard.
I mean, what if Steinberg goes, then what? Cubase is now licenced on a server…
This is quite the shocker.
More or less every project I’ve done the last 20 years uses Kontakt libraries as the main ingredient. I bought the Kontrol MK3 keyboard only last year, which integrates with both the instruments and Cubendo in a great way. Kontakt has become the industry standard for sample libraries for a reason, for most thinkable third party sample library developers (because this is about basically 90% of the sample library market, not only NI’s own sounds).
If even the industry standard sampler can’t survive, then what?
Hopefully they’ll be bought by someone and the software will continue as before. I can’t believe it won’t – way too many people depend on it every day. It’s not like Finale, which could “happily” close business because there was an actual better alternative called Dorico.
But even so, what does this all mean for our industry and the future of the tools we depend on? Have plugins become too cheap? Are less people buying them than before? Are all the constant deals and discounts an act of desperation because the whole industry is in peril?
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Market consolidation means that fewer players will remain in the market in the end. Steinberg will certainly remain one of these players. Furthermore, Steinberg and Yamaha are the strongest brands.
Very good points. Subsidiary companies also include Plugin Alliance and Izotope. I can’t overstate how devastating it would be if they were shut down.
The problem is that the market is oversaturated. It’s a supply-and-demand issue. There are only so many producers and composers out there.
Once a company has released the best they can in terms of compressors, reverbs, etc., and realistic orchestras, and people bought everything they possibly could, then the only way is down.
Hence, endless sales. There is no real demand, or else you wouldn’t be able to buy a compressor that originally cost £200 for £29.99…
Even Orchestral Tools started sales, I have never seen them taking down their prices…
8DIO is also literally giving everything away for next to nothing.
Native Instruments was a very strong brand…just saying…
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