While the whole world has been waiting anxiously for Native Instruments to release the new Traktor Pro, the Berlin, Germany based company has been busy behind the scene raising funds. We just got word that they’ve received a massive investment of $59,000,000 from EMH, a private equity firm.
EMH’s Native Instruments Investment
As reported on Crunchbase, Native Instruments raised €50 million (~$59 million) from a private equity firm named EMH which “provides growth capital for technology-enabled companies.” EMH did this under their Digital Growth Fund, which is “dedicated to the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe”. According to InvestmentEurope.net, “Native Instruments marks the fund’s first investment in a music technology company.”
An unexpected, massive business move that has been done in the past is when Pioneer sold their entire DJ division to investment firm KKR for a $550 million price tag. In the years following, we’ve seen Pioneer DJ start churning out non-stop product updates to all of their lines with a focus on maximizing return on investment. Perhaps Native Instruments can pull off something similar with plug-in updates?
What Problems Could $59m Solve?
“Native Instruments will continue to improve upon several of its existing products aimed at innovating around the DJ-producer experience, including the popular DJing software Traktor and the Stems technology, which breaks tracks into its component parts for live remixing.” – Billboard
There does seem to be a big focus on the future of music creation, not curation, in the language around the investment. We suspect this is because music production appears to have been the biggest money-maker for NI.
“We believe music creation products and services should be integrated in a more appealing, intuitive and cohesive way. We foresee an easily accessible music creation ecosystem that connects user centric design, with powerful technology and data, to further enable the music creators of today, and welcome the new creators of tomorrow.” – Mate Galic, CTO and President of Native Instruments
Hiring Talent: The First Step
One thing is very clear from the coverage of this financial transaction – Native Instruments wants to first focus on getting the right people employed in their offices to take on the challenges. If you’ve watched the company’s Careers page over the last year, it’s seemed that there’s a gap in leadership on the DJ side of the company. They continue to look for a Director Of DJ Products.
“Native Instruments will be focused on recruiting tech talent in Berlin, Los Angeles and London in the coming year. The company has made a handful of key hires in Berlin and Los Angeles over the last 12 months — including the acquisition of remix monetization startup MetaPop, whose former CEO Matthew Adell now serves as Native Instruments’ chief digital officer.”– Billboard
We will see how this plays out and what new technologies they roll out in the next few years.
