EA just went private in a record $55 billion deal, and Saudi Arabia now owns most of it
The maker of Battlefield, The Sims, Madden and EA Sports FC left the stock market on 4 August 2026 in the largest all-cash buyout of its kind. A sovereign wealth fund ended up with 93% of it, and $20 billion of debt came along for the ride. Here is what that actually means.
Electronic Arts, one of the biggest video game publishers on Earth, went private at the close of trading on 4 August 2026, in a deal valuing it at about $55 billion. The buyers are a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), alongside Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, and after the dust settled PIF holds roughly 93% of the company. EA calls it the largest all-cash sponsor take-private in history. It is a genuine landmark, and it is loaded with real questions: about $20 billion of debt, about sovereign-wealth control of Battlefield, The Sims and EA Sports FC, and about what both usually do to a creative business.
For 37 years, Electronic Arts was a public company, its shares trading under the ticker EA since its 1989 debut. At the close of trading on 4 August 2026, that ended. EA was taken private in one of the largest buyouts the industry has ever seen, and the identity of the new owners has made it one of the most scrutinised deals in gaming history.
This is a business story, but it is not only a business story. When a single sovereign wealth fund ends up owning almost all of the company behind Madden, Apex Legends, The Sims and the game formerly known as FIFA, the questions run past the balance sheet. Here is the honest version of what is happening, who is buying, and what is fact versus what is fair concern.
What exactly is happening to EA?
EA has been acquired by a private consortium and removed from the stock market. According to EA's original announcement, first made on 29 September 2025, the deal values the company at an enterprise value of approximately $55 billion, with shareholders receiving $210.00 per share in cash, a 25% premium to EA's unaffected closing price of $168.32 the previous week.
The deal is now done. EA confirmed that the acquisition completed on 4 August 2026, that shareholders are being paid the $210.00 in cash, and that "EA's common stock has ceased trading and will be delisted from NASDAQ." There are no more quarterly earnings calls, no public share price, and no outside shareholders, only the new owners. A 37-year run as a public company is over.
Who is actually buying EA?
Three names, but they are not equal partners. The consortium is made up of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the private-equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, the Miami investment firm founded in 2021 by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.
The balance of power is the part worth pausing on. Regulatory filings reported by outlets including GamingBolt put the post-close ownership at roughly PIF 93.4%, Silver Lake 5.5%, and Affinity Partners 1.1%. PIF was already EA's largest shareholder with a 9.9% stake; this deal converts that foothold into near-total control. So while the headlines say "consortium," the accurate description is blunter: EA is being bought by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, with two much smaller partners along for the ride. Andrew Wilson stays on as CEO, and the company stays headquartered in Redwood City, California.
What is a leveraged buyout, and why does the debt matter?
The mechanics here are worth understanding, because they shape everything that comes next. This is a leveraged buyout: a deal partly funded by borrowed money that is loaded onto the company being bought. EA's announcement lays out the structure plainly: about $36 billion in equity from the buyers, including PIF rolling over its existing 9.9% stake, plus $20 billion in debt fully committed by JPMorgan.
That $20 billion is not the buyers' problem so much as EA's. In a leveraged buyout, the acquired company typically carries the debt and has to service it out of its own cash flow. That is why these deals so often lead to cost-cutting: when a profitable, creative business suddenly owes billions in interest, the pressure to raise revenue and trim expenses gets very real. EA's release calls the transaction "the largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history." Separately, Business Standard, carrying Reuters' reporting and citing Dealogic, reported it as the largest leveraged buyout on record, surpassing the 2007 TXU deal of around $45 billion. That earlier deal collapsed into bankruptcy in 2014 after a heavily leveraged bet on rising natural-gas prices went the wrong way, a reminder of how little room for error debt this size leaves. Those are two different superlatives, and both point at the same thing: a lot of borrowed money is now riding on EA's games.
Why are people worried about Saudi ownership?
Because two separate concerns stack on top of each other, and both are being voiced by serious people rather than just online outrage.
The first is the debt-and-monetisation worry. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, one of the industry's most-read reporters, cautioned that a deal this leveraged could mean "mass layoffs, more aggressive monetisation, and other big cost-cutting measures", exactly the playbook the structure incentivises. That concern lands harder in 2026, a year already defined by brutal games-industry layoffs, and EA's own workforce has publicly worried about what comes next. Those fears sharpened around the close: EA is reported to have told the debt investors funding the buyout that it plans to cut roughly $700 million in annual costs, including about $170 million in "organisational efficiencies", language widely read as a signal of layoffs to come. EA earlier cut more than 300 roles across teams including Respawn in 2026.
The second is political. More than 40 US House Democrats wrote to regulators raising "serious concerns" about the debt-financed deal and about "interlocking directorates and common ownership across competing game publishers", a nod to PIF's large stakes in other gaming companies. And academics have framed the purchase as an extension of Saudi Arabia's "sportswashing" into "game-washing", using cultural investments to soften the kingdom's image amid ongoing human-rights criticism, an argument laid out in The Conversation. You do not have to endorse any single version of these worries to see that "who owns the games, and why" is now a legitimate question, not a paranoid one.
To be fair to the other side: none of this is proof that EA's games will get worse. Silver Lake has a long track record running big technology companies, PIF has mostly been a passive investor in gaming so far, and going private can, in principle, free a studio from the tyranny of quarterly results. The concerns are about incentives and influence, which are real, not about a confirmed plan to ruin anything.
What does this actually mean for the games?
Honestly, in the short term, probably very little that you will notice. EA Sports FC, Madden, Battlefield, Apex Legends and The Sims are not being cancelled, sold off or renamed because of this deal. Andrew Wilson remains CEO, the studios remain in place, and the games on EA's upcoming slate are still coming.
The real effects, if they arrive, will be slower and structural. Watch three things over the next couple of years. Monetisation: does a company now servicing $20 billion of debt lean harder on microtransactions, battle passes and Ultimate Team-style card economies? Headcount: do more layoffs or studio consolidations follow, as the debt math demands savings? And independence: does a new owner with strategic and political interests ever shape what EA does or does not make, or where it does business? None of those are guaranteed. All of them are worth watching. That is the honest posture on the biggest ownership change in modern gaming: it is a genuinely historic deal, the alarms are reasonable, and the proof will be in the patch notes, not the press release.
The EA buyout at a glance
| Company | Electronic Arts (EA) |
| Deal value | ~$55 billion enterprise value |
| Price per share | $210.00 cash (25% premium) |
| Buyers | Saudi PIF, Silver Lake, Affinity Partners (Jared Kushner) |
| Post-close ownership | PIF ~93.4% / Silver Lake ~5.5% / Affinity ~1.1% |
| Financing | ~$36B equity + $20B debt (JPMorgan) |
| Status | Announced Sept 2025; closed 4 Aug 2026, EA delisted from Nasdaq |
| Leadership | Andrew Wilson stays CEO; HQ stays in Redwood City |
For more from the industry, see the Gaming section and our rundown of the biggest games still coming in 2026 and 2027.
Gaming keeps making record money and cutting record jobs. Here is why
Video games are selling and being played more than ever, and the industry has spent 2026 shedding jobs anyway, at Ubisoft, Unity, Take-Two, Bungie and more, on top of the EA and Xbox moves we have covered. A GDC survey found more than a quarter of developers were laid off in the past two years. This is not a slump in demand. It is a structural correction, now sharpened by AI.
Microsoft is cutting hundreds more game workers, and this time the union is fighting back
Another 379 jobs are going at the Elder Scrolls Online and Bethesda parent ZeniMax, part of Microsoft's wider Xbox cuts. What makes this round different is that many of those workers are unionized, and their union is answering with labor-board charges and nationwide rallies. It is the first real stress test of gaming's biggest union deal.
Why every game console got more expensive in 2026, and AI is the biggest reason
For the first time in memory, all three console makers raised prices in a single year: PlayStation, Xbox and now the Switch 2. The headlines blame tariffs, but the bigger culprit is stranger: AI data centers are buying up so much memory that the chips inside a console have surged in price. Here is what actually happened.