Washington DC – Video game giant Electronic Arts, known for The Sims and FIFA games, announced Monday it would be acquired for $55 billion by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
The group includes US investment firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the Miami-based firm founded by Jared Kushner, former White House advisor and son-in-law of President Donald Trump.
“This moment is a powerful recognition of their remarkable work,” EA Chairman and CEO Andrew Wilson said of the company’s employees in a statement, adding that the deal would help “unlock new opportunities on a global stage.”
The deal would be the largest all-cash private equity buyout in history, the statement said.
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EA, known for popular franchises including FIFA soccer games, Madden NFL, The Sims, and Battlefield, reported revenue of $7.5 billion in its most recent fiscal year.
FIFA was updated annually from 1993 to 2023, before Electronic Arts lost the license following a financial disagreement between EA and the FIFA organization.
The publisher also owns The Sims franchise, which allows players to create an avatar and develop characters and a city in a virtual world.
Twenty-five years after its launch, The Sims continues to attract new fans. In May 2024, EA revealed that 85 million people were playing the latest version, The Sims 4.
The California-based company is also counting on the release of the new version of its first-person shooter game Battlefield, called Battlefield 6, which will be its 13th installment in the series.
After seeing its revenue soar in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, the company founded by former Apple employee Trip Hawkins in 1982 has experienced a slowdown in line with the sector as a whole.
This major new deal in the video game world comes two years after Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
