Native Instruments file for insolvency...

[DrGonzo]

Steinberg however was never in Bankruptcy or Insolvency proceedings. They were acquired in 2003 by Pinnacle for $24 million who was making money hand over first because they wanted a DAW to go along with their Digital Video platforms, and got sold a year later to Yamaha for $28.5 million ahead of Pinnacle's merger with Avid who didn't need Cubase when they had Protools. That $28.5 million was pocket change for Yamaha

Yamaha buying Steinberg was one of the few times I've seen a merger/purchase actually ending up well. Before Steinberg was all over the place jumping on every new hot thing without a longterm plan.

/C

[kraster]

Thanks! Maybe there is still some hope...

PLEASE HELP! Comment below and share! Seeing so many of you being sad / mad on social media about what's happening at NI (incl. PA & BX) makes me lose sleep right now. I have just reached out to the current owners of PA/BX and offered my help - again.
Tell us what needs to happen... in your own words.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=25 ... 4491266886

The ego on these guys to basically decline free advice on not running a company into the ground, despite everything falling apart behind the scenes. Assuming the person overseeing the insolvency restructuring is capable maybe he can hire him?

Dirk Ulrich sold Plugin Alliance to Native Instruments in 2021 and left the Native Instruments board in 2024

His fingerprints are all over the current Insolvency. What help can he offer? As a business man he decided that NI was an awesome company and that he should sell his business to them. How does that decision look now? Would you trust him for business advice? I know I wouldn't

If he was so concerned with Plugin Alliance and was such a good business man why did he sell it to Native Instruments and then why did he remain on the board of NI until 2024? He selected who he sold the company to, that is his legacy. It is rather rich for him to play armchair QB now based on his actual track record with his prior business dealings, and then moan about how they are rejecting his "help"

His help is exactly why PA is in this current situation, because he chose to sell the company and then chose who it would be sold to.

Sure, he sold Plugin Alliance to a private-equity-controlled group, but selling a company does not carry any implicit nefarious intent, nor does it transfer long-term control. Strategic authority sat with the majority owner, not with the former PA founder.

Advisory roles are non-operational. They don’t control budgets, staffing, debt, or restructuring — these are the things that actually lead to insolvency. Blaming a former owner years later for PE-driven outcomes is a more emotionally driven criticism than an analytical one.

He has more or less claimed in so many words that he disagreed with the direction the company was taking.

Also he can't win with this argument, he’s blamed for selling, blamed for staying involved, and blamed for speaking out. Under this narrative there’s no action he could have taken that wouldn’t be condemned after the fact.

You can debate whether selling into a PE consolidation was wise or whether he underestimated how predatory PE can be.

But claiming his “help” caused PA’s situation ignores how ownership, governance, and timing actually work.

[glokraw]

What Linux really needs is deeply sampled real / acoustic instruments.

If 'linux summer of code' is on for 2026, DecentSampler would be a worthy project to greatly enhance, even if dozens of NDA's were needed, as it's not open-source...In the interim, I think the linux 'community' needs to learn to play real instruments before worrying about how deep the samples are in songs created and recorded by a linux user (glancing in the mirror as I typed that ) By the time one gets a bunch of tracks and effects teamed up as 'a song', the sample depth is hardly noticable. Melody, harmony, rhythm, and skillfully played phrases are noticable, regardless of any OS or virtual products used in the process. I might use NI's Noire as a centerpiece with 3 or four sounds and few effects, without obscuring it's excellence, but anything more, and I can use pianos from Proteus VX, or Salamander or DecentSampler to save project resources if so desired. I look forward to new owners that will deep-six Native Access.

[limitlesssss]

...this is almost certainly the end of Reaktor. Now it won't even be maintained to run on current OSes. Serious bummer.

I hope Reaktor gets open-sourced.

[DCrown]

Dirk Ulrich knows how to make money, that seems to be all that matters to him and it is legit in capitalism. So many times I could read how rich he is and he pushed 30 USD/plugin sales, I mean PA had sales the whole year.
List price USD 200, but 5 times per year available for USD 30. He copied it from Waves, though.
I think now he is boss of Apogee.
I don't know if NI did the same, cuz their products got less and less attractive to me over the years, but NI had many employees, maybe too many.
And as far as hardware products are concerned, there are too many established producers probably making higher profit.
And the fact that AI gets better and more attractive especially to younger generation will probably get some devs in trouble.

[machinesworking]

Steinberg however was never in Bankruptcy or Insolvency proceedings. They were acquired in 2003 by Pinnacle for $24 million who was making money hand over first because they wanted a DAW to go along with their Digital Video platforms, and got sold a year later to Yamaha for $28.5 million ahead of Pinnacle's merger with Avid who didn't need Cubase when they had Protools. That $28.5 million was pocket change for Yamaha

Yamaha buying Steinberg was one of the few times I've seen a merger/purchase actually ending up well. Before Steinberg was all over the place jumping on every new hot thing without a longterm plan.

/C

That's the point, it wasn't any mystery that when a company gets sold more than once, they're not entirely solvent, but again I would point out people that work for NI have stated flatly none of this is due to NI, it's Francisco screwing up the books and tossing it on NI which again should be pointed out is not referring to NI the individual company, but NI the umbrella organization that includes PA, iZ, etc. According to people who worked there NI was doing fine, the decision was made to sell, they became an umbrella org and were saddled with the debt of buying PA, iZ, UA etc.

So, that points more to a possibility of someone like Yamaha picking them up than bankruptcy, but only time will tell.

[machinesworking]

Yeah, that's why I singled out Ableton - they're significantly bigger than the other successful but smaller companies.

Having owned Live since 03 I'm a bit biased towards the "I love them, but wish the f**k they could get something like swift development going!" side than the praising them for their productivity, but whatever I think of how they run their business, it seems to be doing great! they have managed to not get tagged as a boomer DAW yet, unlike Cubase, DP, Pro Tools etc. That alone is some great marketing strength, so I can't knock the bean counters for sure. I do notice they don't have much of an online community anymore outside of youtube influencers but they have enough of those to get by.

As for speculation - nearly everybody that pays attention to the economy is practically screaming that we're on the verge of some real bad times (AI bubble, housing prices bonkers overvalued, consumer debt insanely high with extremely high APRs on credit cards, inflation, griftflation, general stupidity at the highest levels of government, civil unrest...). Everybody is just kind of waiting for that one thing that will start the dominoes.

Fortunately music as a hobby anyway is a way to pass the time in hard times. They say music, film and restaurants do OK, because no one can afford a new car, upgrades on their house, trips abroad etc. No matter how much the composers of film and TV jingles want to bitch about hobbyists, it's definitely 90% of the market for plugins etc.

NI are in the prosumer category, the makers of expensive hardware are the main people who suffer under economic downturns, because no one is buying Manley for $3000, but Zebra 3 scratches an itch for less then $300.

[kejkz]

Well, as long as current computer hardware can run, any software from the NI group is safe from harm, which in my case is at least few more years. As someone who's making music for decades, I've totally got used to make stems from every song and make midi files from each song, so I can have a document of what was done and could re-create it if needed using some other plugins. Yeah, it might not be 100% accurate as the original, but it would be good enough to communicate the intention. Might even sound better in the end. Have a few PA plugins, nothing from NI or Izotope, but I believe that there isn't a plugin I own licence to that I couldn't change for some other plug if really needed and get what I was after. In the end, the change is the only permanent thing in this world.

[Rivanni]

All we're seeing is a change of management

No, we really aren't. If that was all this was about, they wouldn't be declaring bankruptcy.

What bankruptcy?
Learn the difference between insolvency and bankruptcy.

[ATS]

All we're seeing is a change of management

No, we really aren't. If that was all this was about, they wouldn't be declaring bankruptcy.

What bankruptcy?
Learn the difference between insolvency and bankruptcy.

what is the difference actually?

[DrGonzo]

it just means you don't have enough cash to pay your bills/debts at the moment. insolvency can lead to bankruptcy if no solution is found.

[nix808]

pasted from Google:-

Insolvency is a financial state where an individual or company cannot pay debts when they fall due, whereas bankruptcy is a specific legal, court-ordered process to resolve that insolvency for individuals. Essentially, insolvency is the problem, and bankruptcy is one potential legal solution.
Key differences include:
Definition: Insolvency is a state of distress (cash flow issue); Bankruptcy is a formal declaration and legal process.
Applicability: Insolvency applies to both individuals and companies. Bankruptcy applies only to individuals (and sometimes unincorporated entities like sole traders).
Outcome: Insolvency might be temporary, allowing for restructuring or negotiation. Bankruptcy involves a trustee taking control of assets to pay creditors and usually lasts for a minimum of 3 years.
Corporate Equivalent: Companies that are insolvent go into liquidation or administration, not bankruptcy.
While one can be insolvent without being bankrupt, long-term, unresolved insolvency often leads to bankruptcy.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Getting investors:
In the days of AI it should be difficult to get investors for cash for a company works in the creative sector. They currently prefer to spend their money for AI slop.

Quickly dropping sales:
If customers don't trust you they don't buy anything and move to the competion instead. If you're selling online cometition is just a mouse-click away.
Resellers might also remove the products from their stores as they want to avoid angry cutomers in the future if things should go wrong.
As a big company you can't compensate the dropped income easily, as you have high running costs for empoyees, annuities, real estate, etc.

Recovering trust with the customers:
You can ruin your reputation quickly. But once you ruined it getting back trust from the cutomers is exteremly difficult and takes lots of time.

It all reminds me of what happened with Digital River / ShareIt last year when they filled insolvency. There is a long thread about it in the developer forum. The result was that hundrets of small developers including myself lost months of their income completely.
Reference: viewtopic.php?t=614929

[Scoops]

So this is pure speculation, but, however NI/Izotope/PA lands out of all of this, I sense there is a incredibly large amount of tech debt with respect to the NI portion that will not get resolved.

[Scoops]

So this is pure speculation, but, however NI/Izotope/PA lands out of all of this, I sense there is an incredibly large amount of tech debt with respect to the NI portion that will not get resolved.