[4] Pianist Roland Lamb founded ROLI in 2009 while a graduate student at London's Royal College of Art.

[5] As a jazz pianist, he wanted to create pitch and timbre effects on a keyboard that are often associated with bowed string and orchestral brass instruments.

His concept of a soft, pliable, continuous "keywave surface" was the technological foundation of the Seaboard and the firm's related instruments.

A new company, named Luminary, formed by Lamb with $6M in startup funds from investors, will receive ownership of many of Roli's products.

[14] The Seaboard Rise is a USB and Bluetooth powered MIDI controller with a similar keyboard, but smaller in size and with additional functions.

It has also acquired a number of companies including the virtual instruments maker FXpansion and the social music-sharing platform Blend.

Roli held the rights to the C++ audio coding framework JUCE from 2014, but sold them to iLok software owner PACE in 2020.

[20] NOISE is a music-making app for iOS and Android devices and is also the software system for "Roli Blocks"[21] Equator is a software synthesizer for MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) and the go-to sound engine for the "Seaboard Grand", "Seaboard Rise" And "ROLI Blocks" on a desktop computer.

[23] The ROLI Seaboard RISE 25 won a "Best of Innovation" award from the Consumer Technology Association[24] and ‘2015 Product of the Year’ by FutureMusic.