Saudi Arabia Just Bought EA For $55 Billion

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Saudi Arabia just bought Electronic Arts for $55 billion, the biggest private buyout in Wall Street history. EA, the company behind FIFA, Madden, The Sims, Battlefield, one of the last giant publicly traded game publishers. In September [music] 2025, they announced a sale to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment [music] Fund. The price tag, $55 billion.

[00:00:25]That makes it the largest leveraged buyout [music] in the history of Wall Street, bigger than every tech, banking, or industrial buyout ever recorded.

[00:00:32][music] PIF gets 93.4% of EA. Silver Lake gets 5.5% [music] Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners gets 1.1% December 22nd, 2025, the shareholders [music] voted. 201 million votes in favor, less than 2 million against. [music] Two US senators wrote to the Treasury Secretary asking him to scrutinize the deal. [music] They flagged national security concerns.

[00:00:58]Foreign control of an American technology and entertainment company at this scale [music] had never happened before. Saudi Arabia now controls FIFA, Madden, Battlefield, [music] The Sims. The game that taught you about money management when you were 12 years old is now owned by an oil state.

[00:01:14][music] The deal is set to close in 2027 pending regulator approval. Drop a like for more gaming industry stories.