Who Owns Native Instruments?

Native Instruments was founded in Berlin in 1996 by Stephan Schmitt and Volker Hinz. Its first product, Generator, evolved into Reaktor, the modular synthesis environment that established the company's reputation for deep, software-first instruments. Through the late 1990s and 2000s it built the catalog that defined modern music production software.

The landmark products came steadily. Traktor arrived in 2000 for digital DJing, Kontakt in 2002 became the industry-standard sampling platform, Guitar Rig followed for amp modeling, and Massive in 2007 became a defining wavetable synthesizer. Maschine, launched in 2009, married software to a hardware groovebox and opened a production hardware line. The Komplete bundle packaged the instruments and effects into an all-in-one suite, and the NKS standard let third-party developers integrate with the ecosystem.

The private equity era began in 2021, when Francisco Partners took a majority stake and merged Native Instruments with iZotope under a group named Soundwide in 2022, also acquiring Plugin Alliance and Brainworx. In June 2023 the group was renamed Native Instruments, absorbing the sister brands under the flagship name. Layoffs through 2023 and 2024 cut staff significantly.

The structure collapsed in January 2026, when the group's key German companies filed for preliminary insolvency in Berlin after a planned takeover by private credit lenders fell through. Administrator Torsten Martini ran a structured sale process in which inMusic won the core business, Boris FX took iZotope, and Dirk Ulrich reacquired Plugin Alliance and Brainworx. inMusic's purchase completed June 30, 2026, leaving the Native Instruments brand inside inMusic as owner of Kontakt, Komplete, Maschine, and Traktor.