As noted, the company has been in decline since going into private equity in 2020. Pro audio users have felt it was less and less about innovation and more about selling preset packs and slim-value upgrades, as well as increasingly onerous license management. At the same time people are distressed because the firm has a very impressive history of software and hardware products.

Inmusic (which owns Akai, Moog and several other premium pro audio brands) is a potential buyer to acquire them as they already have some product crossover in the form of NI plugins available exclusively on Akai hardware. However this would mean two flagship products that compete against each other (NI's Maschine and Akai's MPC, two very advanced drum pad/sequencing powerhouses). That would mean abandonment of Maschine, whose development was already stalled, and disappointment/bad feeling from many owners; pro audio consumers are necessarily emotional about their creative tools and tend to hold grudges.

OF course, the best of both products could be combined in a Secret Third Thing that embodied the best features of both, but the reality is that Inmusic has just released new flagship Akai MPCs (the 3rd generation of the current design paradigm), and they're such a big upgrade upgrade in both hardware and software terms that they're steamrolling their direct and indirect competition. Those flagship units (and some lighter-weight entry level units to come) have a ~5 year sales life before being replaced, and the latest software still runs well on the Gen 1 machines from 2017, albeit more slowly and without the fancy additional hardware features. So Inmusic is positively basking in brand loyalty at the moment, because they've prioritized capital investment for product development across multiple brands. They've saved by optimizing supply chain efficiencies, manufacturing more stuff in Asia, keeping materials costs low and exploiting economies of scale, while still encouraging designers and engineers to follow their hearts which has resulted in a lot of very happy customers.

Native Instruments had all this, with a very deep software stack and very well-engineered hardware offerings that operated perfectly together (ie no synchronization issues, no or minimal manual configuration required for hardware user interface mapping etc). But the product line got more and more bloated, the license management more of a pain, and development on the hardware stalled. When they were taken over by their existing PE owners in 2020 they seemed not to have any innovation or investment ideas of their own but were more focused on how to squeeze more money out of existing IP. This lead to a series of missteps - low value 'upgrades', abandonment of beloved software flagships, and the absence of any discernible roadmap for the hardware side of the business. This really matters in the pro audio space because as I mentioned above creative people are passionate about their tools. It's not unusual to see people who have the latest and greatest sequencer or audio interface hooked up to a 45 year old synthesizer and/or a slavish modern clone of that older design with additional features. music tech buyers want the heritage of the past to be maintained, but also to be excited with a steady supply of new music technology, and NI's private equity owners have completely failed to deliver the latter,w ith no significant hardware developments since 2019. The company went from arguably having the best hardware offerings in its niche (in terms of capabilities, ergonomics, firmware reliability, software integration, consumer loyalty) to seeing those edges disappear to their primary competitors one by one.

It's hard to guess what happens from here. Good managers could revive the company and build it back to its previous greatness, but the market has already seen it wrecked once by private equity and is wary of getting/staying invested in a product ecosystem that may not have a long term future. Music tech people are also acutely aware of the impact of tariffs and AI on hardware component pricing and product design. Currently the mood about NI's long term future is pessimistic; people are already talking about preserving existing setups as museum pieces, ie maxxed out as much as possible and then disconnected from the internet so they can be maintained in working order but otherwise frozen.

But I'm not holding my breath.