In a surprising turn of events, DxO Labs has confirmed on their website that the company has filed for bankruptcy. In a statement on their official website, the company shares that they have chosen “to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection and is now in the process of restructuring the business," it also says the restructuring "will not affect our customers in any way." The letter further goes on to assure the company’s existing and potentially new customers that the company will continue to function with no impact on end products.
The filing by DxO Labs is intended to offer protection from bankruptcy while the company undergoes restructuring. The company will continue to work on its image editing software DxO PhotoLabs, promising a free software update in June. The update is said to add improved local correction features and support for seen new cameras ‘including the Canon EOS 2000D and the Sony A7 III.’ The company also reaffirmed its commitment to sticking with the ‘perpetual license’ model as opposed to the license model adopted by Adobe.
Besides confirming an update to its own editing suite, DxO Labs also confirmed that a much-needed update to Nik Software is also on its way in June. DxO Labs had acquired the Nik Collection from Google in December 2017 after the search Giant had neglected the suite for quite some time. In their statement, DxO Labs say that the first update to Nik Collection which will become available in June will focus on fixing bugs across all seven plugins, along with ensuring that the plugins and their standalone versions work without any problems on the newest operating systems by Microsoft and Apple.
For those who are worried about the camera rating part of DxO, there’s absolutely no need to worry. In September of 2017, DxO Image Labs spun-off DxO Mark into a separate, privately owned entity, separating it for good from its other business property named DxO Labs. DxO Mark continues to work in the sphere of commercial image testing, developing new standards for testing cameras and lenses, while DxO Labs was to keep its software business along with the hardware business which developed the DxO One the smartphone camera attachment. So in the current context, it is the software and hardware business that has filed for bankruptcy and not the camera testing company that so many of us have come to be familiar with.