The main news yesterday was the acquisition of Electronic Arts by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. This consortium already has plans for how to cut costs and pay off debts, and it will be done – you guessed it – via AI.
At least that’s what the Financial Times report says. The new owners bet on artificial intelligence to cut EA’s costs and “manage a large debt load on a company that historically carried limited net debt.”Â
This should “significantly boost EA’s profits in the coming years.”
This is not surprising, considering EA’s commitment to AI before the deal, especially after it fired 400 people in search of cost cuts.
EA announced its acquisition on Monday, with the PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners paying $55 billion for the deal. An interesting part of the agreement is who EA is going to belong to: PIF is controlled by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Silver Lake is a private equity firm with Egon Durban and Greg Mondre as co-CEOs.
Affinity Partners caused the most unrest among people, though, as the investment firm is owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Interestingly, his company gets a lot of funding from the PIF.
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