Electronic Arts Goes Private in the Largest Leveraged Buyout in…

Team S · 2026-08-05T07:09:41.000Z

Electronic Arts closed the books on 36 years as a public company this week. The $55 billion buyout that hands control of the video game publisher to a consortium of investors officially closed on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, and EA's stock has already stopped trading on the NASDAQ. How the Deal Came Together EA first announced the agreement on September 29, 2025, saying it would be acquired by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by Jared Kushner. Under the terms, the consortium bought out 100% of EA, with PIF rolling its existing 9.9% stake into the new ownership rather than cashing out. Everyone else got paid $210 in cash per share, a 25% premium over EA's price of $168.32 before the announcement and even a step above the stock's prior all-time high of $179.01. Roughly $36 billion of the purchase came from equity that PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners put up themselves. The remaining $20 billion was arranged as debt financing through J.P. Morgan Chase, with $18 billion of that drawn at closing. Once the dust settled, PIF ended up with by far the largest share of the company, reported at somewhere around 93%, while Silver Lake and Affinity Partners held smaller minority stakes. EA's own shareholders had little hesitation about the deal. At a special virtual meeting on December 22, 2025, roughly 99% of the votes cast, more than 201 million shares, went in favor of the merger, according to the company's SEC filing. Getting past Washington took longer. In October 2025, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who chairs the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and separately to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, asking for close scrutiny of the deal. Their concerns centered on Saudi Arabia potentially gaining outsized influence over EA's player data, AI systems, and game content through PIF's majority ownership. The European Commission cleared the deal under EU merger rules on July 23, 2026, and EA confirmed in a Form 8-K filing that every remaining regulatory approval, including the US national security review, was secured by July 30, 2026. Why EA Chose to Go Private The most immediate reason cited across industry coverage is relief from the "quarterly treadmill." As a public company, EA had to hit earnings targets every three months, which pushed studios toward predictable, safe release schedules. Going private removes that pressure and gives management more room to stretch out development cycles on big titles without worrying about how a delay looks to Wall Street analysts. That flexibility comes with a catch. Financing $20 billion of the deal through debt means the newly private EA is starting life with a much heavier balance sheet than it carried as a public company. Analysts have noted that this kind of debt load can cut both ways: it can force sharper cost discipline and faster decision-making, but it also raises the stakes if revenue growth slows, since debt payments don't wait for a hit game to launch. The deal also fits a broader pattern. EA's live-service games, things like ongoing sports titles and battle royale content, now make up close to 75% of its net bookings, giving it the kind of steady, recurring revenue that private equity firms find attractive in a take-private deal. Video game and creative industry deals more broadly have been consolidating, echoing similar buyout activity in music and film. For PIF specifically, the acquisition lines up with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 strategy to diversify its economy beyond oil, including a stated push to build influence across global entertainment and gaming. PIF had already built stakes in other gaming and esports companies before pursuing EA outright. Despite the change in ownership, EA isn't relocating. The company stays headquartered in Redwood City, California, and Andrew Wilson continues as CEO. PIF Deputy Governor Turqi Alnowaiser said the fund has followed EA closely as a minority investor for years and sees gaming as a strategic growth area. Silver Lake's Egon Durban pointed to plans for heavier investment in EA's development, including AI tools, while Kushner offered his own statement backing the company's direction going forward. EA's lineup of franchises, including The Sims, Battlefield, Madden NFL, EA Sports FC, and Apex Legends, remains the backbone of the business under new ownership. Its next major release, Battlefield 6, is due out October 10, 2026. In its final day as a public stock, EA closed at $209.70, just under the buyout price. Looking back, shares had gained 54% over five years, 31% over the past year, and smaller increases of 2.6% year to date, 6.5% over six months, and 2.1% over the past month.

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Electronic Arts Goes Private in the Largest Leveraged Buyout in… | Newnex