Electronic Arts is almost about to make the jump to being a private company in a deal that could be worth upwards of $50 billion. Reports today from The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times say that a deal announcement is imminent and could be made as early as next week.
Anonymous sources speaking with these outlets say that Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners are all interested in investing in Electronic Arts.
Silver Lake is a prominent American global private equity firm renowned for its strategic investments in the technology sector. The company was founded in 1999 and has investments across a wide range of technology focused companies. Silver Lake has made investments in companies such as Dell, Alibaba Group, and is one of the investors in the proposed TikTok deal in the United States.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, serving as the country's primary means of economic diversification and global investments. The PIF has made significant investments in a wide array of sectors, from technology and entertainment to sports, aiming to reduce the nation's reliance on oil revenues. Saudi Arabia's PIF holds significant investments in companies such as Nintendo, Take-Two, Activision Blizzard, Koei Tecmo, Capcom, and Nexon. As of 2024, they also held a 9% stake in Electronic Arts.
These high-profile international investments have been criticized as a form of "sportswashing" or "whitewashing." Critics argue that these ventures are a deliberate strategy to distract from and improve Saudi Arabia's international image, which has been heavily scrutinized for its poor human rights record, including the suppression of dissent and the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Affinity Partners is a private equity firm Jared Kushner started after his time in the White House, notably securing an extremely controversial $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, was a senior advisor to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump, with a wide-ranging portfolio that included Middle East peace negotiations and government operations. His time as senior advisor to Trump was marred by several controversies surrounding his security clearance, potential conflicts of interest with his family's business, and his close relationship with Saudi leadership.
If this deal actually pans out, this would become the largest leveraged buyout ever. The current largest leveraged buyout happened in 2007 when the Texas utility TXU was bought by a group of private-equity firms for around $32 billion.
