The Deal That Just Closed
On 23 July 2026, the European Commission cleared the Public Investment Fund-led acquisition of Electronic Arts under the EU Merger Regulation. The Commission's review found no competition concerns, concluding that PIF was acting as a financial investor rather than as a rival games publisher entering the market.
The $55 billion take-private transaction closed on 4 August 2026, becoming the largest leveraged buyout in history. Electronic Arts delisted from Nasdaq, ending a run that began with its 1989 stock market debut, and became a private company for the first time in nearly four decades.
Who Owns EA Now
Post-close, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holds approximately 93.4 percent of Electronic Arts. Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that co-led the transaction, holds approximately 5.5 percent, and Affinity Partners, the investment firm run by Jared Kushner, holds approximately 1.1 percent.
PIF is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and its expanding stakes in Western entertainment and games companies have drawn scrutiny. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have raised what they describe as culture-washing or sportswashing concerns about that pattern of investment, a debate that sits alongside the deal without changing its financial mechanics.
The Debt the Business Now Carries
The buyout was financed with debt, and Electronic Arts now carries roughly $18 billion in net debt as a result. Estimated annual interest payments on that debt run to about $1.8 billion.
That interest bill exceeds EA's own annual EBITDA, estimated at roughly $1.5 billion. A company cannot service interest payments larger than its earnings indefinitely out of existing cash flow alone, which is the arithmetic that sits behind everything EA has told its lenders since March.
The $700 Million Plan, and the Layoffs That Came First
EA has told banks and debt investors it plans to cut $700 million in annual costs, a figure first pitched to lenders in March 2026 as part of financing the deal. $170 million of that total is labeled 'organizational efficiencies', a phrase Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier and others have read as a euphemism for headcount reduction, though EA has not confirmed any specific number of roles, a timeline, or a list of affected studios.
The cuts did not wait for the deal to close. EA reduced staff three separate times in 2026 before 4 August, including more than 300 people at Respawn Entertainment, plus reductions across the Battlefield development pipeline at DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect and Motive, and at Full Circle, the studio behind the Skate reboot.
What This Means If You Are Watching From Outside
The European Commission's clearance was explicit on one point: this deal did not raise competition concerns. What it did not need to rule on, because it was not its job to, was debt service, and that has turned out to be the actual risk in this transaction. $1.8 billion a year in interest against $1.5 billion in EBITDA is not a number that balances without cuts, and the market has known that arithmetic since the financing was first pitched in March.
For an owner evaluating a leveraged buyout from the outside, the lesson is not about EA specifically. It is about what a debt-funded take-private actually costs once the financing has to be serviced by the acquired company's own cash flow rather than the buyer's balance sheet: the studios in EA's pipeline absorbed three rounds of cuts before day one of private ownership, well before the new owners even took the stage. Anyone being acquired by, partnering with, or dependent on a vendor that has just gone through, or might go through, the same structure should read the interest-to-EBITDA math before reading the press release.
Read next: EA Stops Reporting Its Numbers After Today | The EU Cleared the Money, Not the Roadmap
