Three weeks ago, Native Instruments lost its entire support team. Now it has lost its UK office, its CEO and its CTO.
According to company filings reported by MusicTech and MusicRadar on 11 and 12 August 2026, inMusic has closed Native Instruments' UK operation, putting roles across product, engineering, design, finance and marketing at risk of termination. CEO Nick Williams and Chief Product and Technology Officer Simon Cross have both been removed. Richard Seymour, who already runs inMusic Europe, has taken over as director of Native Instruments UK.
The news first surfaced on Reddit, in a post that read: "The layoffs continue: InMusic just fired the whole native instruments UK office... What everyone already thought about InMusic turns out to be correct once again." inMusic confirmed to MusicTech that organisational changes are underway, framing them as removing "layers that were established to support a private equity ownership model."
Why is this happening now?
inMusic bought Native Instruments in May 2026, months after the Berlin company entered preliminary insolvency proceedings under its previous private-equity owner, Francisco Partners. TTH covered what came next: by mid-July, roughly 100 people across Native Instruments' departments had been let go, including its entire support team, the same week Dirk Ulrich, founder of Plugin Alliance and Brainworx, bought both companies back from inMusic. The UK closure is the same integration playbook, one department at a time. Roles reportedly on the line include a product manager, product designer, engineering manager, the CFO, VP of global marketing and senior engineers, several of them people who build Maschine, Kontakt and Komplete.
What does inMusic actually say?
inMusic's statement to MusicTech calls this "simplifying our organisational and legal structure" and insists "Native Instruments remains a strategically important part of inMusic, and our commitment to the brand is unchanged. Product development continues at a strong pace, with major new hardware and software initiatives already underway for 2027 and beyond." It is the same reassurance the company gave after buying Moog Music in 2023, an acquisition that was followed by roughly 30 layoffs and the move of Moog's US manufacturing to Taiwan.
"What everyone already thought about InMusic turns out to be correct once again."
What happens to Komplete, Maschine and Kontrol now?
Nobody outside inMusic knows yet, and that is the actual problem. Komplete is the sample and plugin library tens of thousands of producers build sessions around; Maschine and Kontrol are hardware people plan studio purchases around for years. Losing the CTO, the VP of product design and the engineering manager on the same filing does not sound like a company protecting its roadmap. It sounds like a company protecting its balance sheet while the roadmap sorts itself out later, or doesn't.
Why it matters
Every producer with Komplete installed, a Maschine on the desk or a Kontrol keyboard as their MIDI controller is now dependent on a company that has cut its support desk and its UK leadership inside three weeks of each other, run by an owner whose last major acquisition ended in a factory move overseas.
What we think
inMusic's line about removing "private equity layers" would land better if inMusic itself weren't now the one doing the cutting. Moog's history is the tell: buy the brand, keep the name on the box, hollow out the people who built it. Nothing here proves Komplete or Maschine development is about to stall, but nothing here proves it won't either, and that uncertainty is exactly what a producer betting a studio workflow on this ecosystem cannot afford to sit with.
