Kushner, Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia now own EA
The $55 billion acquisition of the EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher by a Saudi-led consortium closed on Tuesday, ending a 36-year run on the stock market and handing Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund more than 93 percent of one of the biggest names in gaming. The deal was first announced in September 2025 and cleared its final regulatory hurdle only days ago, when the European Union signed off. Wilson, who has run EA since 2013, stays on, and the company remains headquartered in Redwood City, California. EA posted a $387 million profit for the quarter ending June 30, and annual revenue has hovered between $7.4 billion and $7.6 billion for several years. Clearing $20 billion at that pace, with interest accruing, is not a short project. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has warned it could mean layoffs and more aggressive monetisation, and EA has already cut around 5 percent of its workforce in 2024 plus several hundred more roles in May.
Private equity firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter run by Jared Kushner, hold the remainder. It now stands as the largest leveraged buyout in history, and that word does a lot of work here. Twenty billion dollars of the purchase price came from debt financing arranged through JPMorgan, and that debt sits on EA’s own balance sheet. The company, not its new owners, has to pay it back. In a letter to employees, he restated EA’s commitment to “building the world’s greatest games, communities, and creative culture. The arithmetic around that promise is less comfortable. Analysts expect the cost of that debt to surface somewhere. Silver Lake CEO Egon Durban’s press-release remark about what AI could do for game development did little to settle the mood among developers.
There is a cultural objection running alongside the financial one. Sims players have petitioned against the sale, citing Saudi Arabia’s treatment of LGBTQ+ people, while advocacy group Players Alliance HQ has urged gamers to raise the takeover with their local politicians. EA frames the deal as licence to invest aggressively and accelerate innovation. Someone still has to service the loan. Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.