Ten weeks. That's how long it took for the company that promised continuity to gut the department its own customers actually talk to.
inMusic closed its acquisition of Native Instruments on May 8, 2026, folding the Berlin software and hardware maker into a portfolio that already runs Akai Professional and Moog. By mid-July, insider accounts first reported by Synth Anatomy put the toll at roughly 100 jobs cut across nearly every department at NI, and one detail stands out from the rest: the entire customer support team is gone.
What actually happened at Native Instruments?
According to a former employee who spoke to Synth Anatomy, the cuts were not confined to a single unit. "It has occurred across nearly all departments," they said, describing roughly 100 people affected and warning it "will keep happening." The same account is explicit about who structured the decision: "This was set up by inMusic as part of their buy."
"I found out the entire customer support team was terminated. This was set up by inMusic as part of their buy."
Development and hardware staff were reportedly placed on garden leave through September, with some of those roles potentially folded into other inMusic brands rather than kept as dedicated NI functions. A second account, an electronic producer posting under the handle "Unders," corroborated similar cuts hitting development, hardware and support. Neither inMusic nor Native Instruments has issued any public statement confirming numbers, a timeline or what happens next, per Synth Anatomy and groove.de, which separately reported on the layoffs on July 20.
Why does the timing sting so much?
Native Instruments didn't arrive at this deal from a position of strength. The company filed for preliminary insolvency in Germany back in March 2026, a process that put it into a formal merger and acquisition track and ended with inMusic taking control two months later. The rest of NI's software empire got carved up at the same time: iZotope was moved over to Boris FX, while Plugin Alliance and its sister brand Brainworx were sold back to founder Dirk Ulrich, spinning both out of the structure entirely.
What stayed inside inMusic's walls was the core NI brand: Kontakt, Traktor, Maschine and Komplete. And what got cut first, according to these accounts, was the team that answers the phone when one of those products breaks.
What does this mean if you run Kontakt, Maschine or Komplete?
For the producers who license Komplete every year, run Kontakt libraries on deadline or gig with Maschine hardware, this isn't an abstract corporate reshuffle. It's the desk you email when an authorization fails or a plugin won't load, and reports suggest that desk, as NI staffed it, no longer exists in the same form. inMusic has not said publicly how or whether support gets rebuilt inside its own centralized customer service operation, and that silence, ten weeks after closing a deal for a brand this size, is itself the story.
Native Instruments has been through a version of this before: a 2019 restructuring also cut around 100 jobs, that time under its previous ownership and with an official statement attached. What's different in 2026 is the source. This time, the only account is workforce testimony, funneled through gear press, about a company that now answers to someone else.
