Ableton AG

What does Ableton own?
Ableton owns the Live DAW, the Push and Move hardware lines, the Link technology, and the Cycling '74 subsidiary that develops the Max programming environment.

Is Ableton publicly traded?
No. Ableton AG uses the German stock-corporation legal form but is not listed on any exchange. Its shares are privately held by founders and insiders.

Who founded Ableton?
Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke, who performed together as Monolake, founded the company with software engineer Bernd Roggendorf in Berlin in 1999. Behles remains CEO.

Where is Ableton headquartered?
Ableton is headquartered in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin, Germany, with additional offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo.

How many brands does Ableton own?
Its principal product brands are Live, Push, Move, and the Cycling '74 Max platform, alongside free tools such as Link and the Note iOS app.

Who owns Ableton?
The company is privately held by its founders and insiders. No external parent company or private equity firm controls it.

Ableton was founded in Berlin in 1999 by Gerhard Behles, who had worked on granular synthesis at Native Instruments, and Robert Henke, his partner in the electronic music project Monolake, together with programmer Bernd Roggendorf. The founding idea came directly from their work as performers: existing studio software assumed music was assembled track by track, while electronic musicians needed to trigger and improvise with loops in real time.

Live was released commercially in 2001. Its Session View, a grid of clips that could be launched in any order against a synced clock, was a genuine departure from the linear-timeline convention of rival DAWs. The product found its audience in techno and electronic production first, then spread into mainstream studio work.

Product milestones tracked the company's growth. Live added MIDI sequencing, instruments, and audio recording through the 2000s. The Push hardware controller launched in 2013 in partnership with Akai, later becoming an in-house standalone instrument with Push 3 in 2023. The 2017 acquisition of Cycling '74 brought Max, the influential visual programming environment, into the portfolio, and Max for Live deepened integration between the two products.

The compact Move instrument launched in 2024, extending the hardware line to portable sketching. Live 12 shipped the same year. Commercial register filings show revenue climbed from roughly €52 million in 2018 to €84.5 million in 2024, with a return to €9.0 million in profit after two loss-making years tied to hardware development costs.