iZotope is now coming to rest post-Native Instruments as the music software maker is acquired by Boris FX. And when they say founder-owned, they mean it: the guy’s name is actually Boris (Yamnitsky). The pairing frankly makes more sense than either NI/Soundwide or inMusic. It makes Boris FX the most interesting software house to watch right now. Here’s why.
iZotope’s offerings often overlapped confusingly with the rest of Native Instruments — which, post-megamergers, included not only NI’s own software but also Plugin Alliance and Brainworx (phew). And the ever-expanding inMusic, with its hardware focus and MPC and DJ lines, also seemed an odd fit — like iZotope would just get lost.
inMusic bought Native Instruments whole, but there was a strong suspicion that it would break off some of the pieces it had just acquired. iZotope was a prime candidate for a post-merger un-merger. And here we are.
You can read the statements from iZotope and Boris FX founder Boris Yamnitsky. But the obvious takeaways as two Emmy Award-winning companies (really) meet up:
- This puts iZotope together with an independent company that can focus on the acquisition.
- iZotope is widely used in post-production — and that industry can afford the top-of-the-line suite license for software like RX in a way the bedroom producer can’t.
- There’s likely overlap with research and machine learning competencies. That is not to say generative AI, but technologies like advanced 3D camera tracking — like the Hollywood-grade SynthEyes or the AI-powered masking in Mocha. (Boris FX has already ventured into machine learning-assisted audio restoration with CrumplePop, which it acquired from its original developer — but iZotope can complement Boris’ offerings here.)
No, the real question is how Boris FX will handle the overlap between RX and CrumplePop — though, of course, iZotope is more than just RX (hello mixing and mastering and effects), and Boris’s audio offerings are way more than just CrumplePop.
And another thing: Boris FX recently snapped up Sequoia and Samplitude, the advanced high-end audio workstations and production tools. (At the entry level, think about iZotope’s more beginner-focused tools alongside Music Studio.)
So Boris FX is kind of the obvious choice to acquire iZotope — so much so that it seems likely they were one of the bidders with the insolvency administrator. There, they may have run headfirst with other bidders into the German insolvency process, which wanted to sell off NI as one piece, whether or not that made sense. (Whatever happened there, it’s clear it did not make sense.)
Anyway, this sounds like a match that fits. And it’s got the stability of independent ownership.
For all the AI all over the place, I am also confident that once the AI bubble bursts, post-production will remember that quality requires human skill. That means a strong future for Boris FX as an audiovisual company. (For history buffs/old people, this feels a lot like what the Pinnacle/Steinberg or Sonic Foundry/Sony deals wanted to be but ultimately weren’t — a smart AV combo.)
Oh yeah — I almost forgot…
Boris FX also bought up the former Sonic Foundry products this year — Vegas Pro, Acid Pro, and Sound Forge — concluding their ten-year life at Magix (aka the German company that filed for insolvency after private equity investments that none of us have been talking about).
I’m going to need to make a giant poster of the last 25 years of AV software, in the Worst Merch Idea Ever.
So while no one was watching, Miami-based Boris FX has quietly become a powerhouse in visual and sound production, all while staying independent and founder-owned. With Avid making deep staff cuts, Boris FX is suddenly the cool AV developer.
In other words, while venture capital and private equity were taking the empires they were supposedly building them and smashing them into little pieces, and big industry names tended to stagnate and/or alienate users, Boris FX was quietly building up the most compelling set of sound and visual tools for high-end production.
Remember when Pixar wound up being a bigger animation house than Disney, and sort of … absorbed the mouse’s own animation department? Don’t take your eyes off Boris.