Electronic Arts set to close $55 billion go-private deal Tuesday, the largest LBO ever

Electronic Arts expects to close its $55 billion take-private deal on or about the close of trading on August 4, 2026, the company confirmed, after clearing its final regulatory hurdle — European Commission approval — in late July. The all-cash transaction, backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, will end EA's 35-year run as a publicly traded company and stands as the largest leveraged buyout ever recorded, surpassing the $45 billion TXU Energy deal that had held the record since 2007.

What's actually closing

The deal was originally announced with a target close by June 30, 2026 — the end of EA's first fiscal quarter — but slipped roughly a month as regulators in multiple jurisdictions worked through the review. All required regulatory approvals were secured by July 30, clearing the way for the August 4 close. CEO Andrew Wilson will continue leading the company, and EA's headquarters will remain in Redwood City, California — signaling this is a financial restructuring of ownership rather than an operational overhaul.

Why a leveraged buyout, and why now

Structuring the deal as a leveraged buyout means the consortium is financing a large portion of the $55 billion price using debt secured against EA's own future cash flows — a structure private equity uses specifically to acquire large public companies without committing the full purchase price in cash upfront. For PIF, the deal extends Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund further into the gaming sector, where it has already built stakes across major publishers as part of its broader economic diversification strategy away from oil revenue. For Silver Lake, it's a continuation of the firm's long-running strategy of taking large, mature tech and media companies private to restructure them outside the quarterly earnings pressure of public markets.

Going private also removes EA from the scrutiny of quarterly earnings calls and activist shareholders — a structural change that matters for a company managing the tension between live-service game monetization (which investors reward) and single-player game quality (which reviewers and players reward, but which doesn't always show up cleanly in quarterly numbers).

Implications for the games industry

A $55 billion private buyout of one of the industry's largest publishers is a signal to the rest of the games sector about available capital and appetite for consolidation. It also puts EA in the same category as recent large-scale private equity and sovereign-wealth involvement in gaming — a trend line that includes major stakes and acquisitions from Saudi Arabia's PIF across other publishers in the past two years. Whether the new ownership structure changes EA's product strategy — more or less investment in live-service titles like FIFA/EA Sports FC and Apex Legends versus single-player franchises — will be one of the first things industry watchers look for once the deal closes and EA stops reporting quarterly results publicly.

As reported by Variety, with additional detail from Engadget.