Teenage Engineering’s founder says the company is done making synths
Jesper Kouthoofd says the OP-1, OP-XY and PO line are on the way out. Whether that means now or eventually is where the reports part ways.
Jesper Kouthoofd told his team last fall, during a company reorganization, that he wants Teenage Engineering to stop making synthesizers. That includes the OP-1 that started it all. The founder and CEO said so in an interview with Lukas Mauve for Highsnobiety, published October 7, and the company itself shared it on Instagram under the same headline.
His reasoning is blunt. “Everyone was like, ‘What are you talking about?'” he says of the team’s reaction. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that, for us, the products aren’t the business. We can be so much more than that.” Elsewhere in the interview he puts it more bluntly still: “We shouldn’t make profits out of the products.” The list of instruments in question covers the OP-1, the OP-XY and the Pocket Operator series, among others.
The timeline is the unclear part. MusicTech reads the interview as synth production stopping immediately. Gearnews notes that so far this is a founder’s statement in an interview, with no official timeline and nothing said about what happens to existing products or future support. Until Teenage Engineering says more, treat “immediately” as the less certain version. Nobody has announced a last production run, a discontinuation date or an end to firmware updates.
What he wants to do instead is vaguer. Some projects are five to ten years from reality, and he hints at one that could change how we experience life online. He won’t say what. The back catalog gives some idea of the range: a portable vinyl record cutter, a choir of eight wooden singing dolls, a plastic PC case that snaps together without screws. The company has around 100 employees and roughly $46 million in annual revenue, and Kouthoofd personally decides which prototypes ship, even when his own team doubts they’ll sell. He is not a fan of spreadsheets or customer surveys.
If you own TE gear, the practical picture is calmer than the headline. The company’s update policy has been among the best in the business, with existing products still picking up new functions, and nothing so far says that stops. If you’ve been eyeing an OP-XY or an OP-1 Field, Gearnews guesses prices will climb again, as they tend to on TE hardware. That is a guess, not an announcement, but if the line really is ending, waiting is the riskier move. Buying new before a rumored end of production is also how people end up overpaying, so it’s a call for your own budget.
The community’s loudest worry is support. One Reddit user hopes TE will open-source its firmware if no new synths are coming, so owners could keep improving the devices after the company moves on. Nothing suggests that is planned. Another commenter takes the opposite view: the design language is “done,” there is “nothing to add or subtract any more.”
Brand loyalty doesn’t look shaken. Lykke Li, quoted in the Highsnobiety piece, calls Teenage Engineering “a point of view more than anything.” But a point of view is not a roadmap. If you built a portable setup around the OP-1 or OP-XY, assume the next new TE product won’t be one you can slot into it, and watch for an official statement on support before you plan around future updates.
The company was founded in 2005 and shipped the first OP-1 in 2011. Whether it ends synths with a bang or lets them fade out is the next thing to find out.
