Report: Silver Lake and the Saudi Arabia PIF hold talks with Unity to explore
Imran Khan,Contributing Editor,GameDeveloper.comNovember 6, 2026schedule2 Min Readvia UnityUnity Software, the company behind the Unity game engine, is in conversations with Silver Lake and the Saudi Arabia Private…
November 6, 2026
schedule2 Min Readvia UnityUnity Software, the company behind the Unity game engine, is in conversations with Silver Lake and the Saudi Arabia Private Investment Fund, according to new reporting from Reuters. Both Silver Lake and the PIF just recently finalized an acquisition of Electronic Arts, taking the company private in a leveraged buyout.
The Reuters story states that a consortium of investors are involved, with the biggest being Silver Lake—owned by United States President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner—and Saudi Arabia's Private Investment Fund, which has been investing in numerous video game and technology companies internationally. Silver Lake already owns eight percent of Unity, but Reuters reports that PIF approached both Unity and the investment firm to make an offer for a full buyout.
The sources for the Reuters report also state that the deal would take the form of a leveraged buyout, much like the Electronic Arts deal which purchased the company with funds that would need to be recouped by its operating profit. While not being the record-breaking numbers the EA acquisition boasted, this would still be one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in history.
Unity's game engine is used, by their own accounting, in over half of all mobile games and a large proportion of console and PC games. Scopely, which is already owned by the PIF and Silver Lake among others, uses it to power titles like Pokémon Go and Monopoly Go.
Unity has expanded to an AI-prominent structure, recently launching a prompt-based tool in collaboration with Google to create games entirely from user prompts called Unity Spark.
The company unveiled a new policy of Runtime Fees in 2024 which was intended to charge developers a per-install tariff, but a monumental backlash to the idea from developers forced Unity to undo the planned policy. Declining stock prices were perhaps the reason then-Unity CEO John Riccitiello—also former CEO of Electronic Arts—resigned from his position. The current CEO, Matthew Bromberg, was also a former EA executive who acted as General Manager of BioWare, a studio which the publisher recently shut down as it attempts to pay off the leveraged buyout from Silver Lake and PIF.
The backlash that unseated Riccitiello shows that Unity is not inured to revolt from its client-facing business, unlike Electronic Arts which does not deal directly with individual developers at a similar scale. A buyout from new, controversial owners could lead to an upheaval in Unity's core business, potentially putting the company's operating profit at risk.
Top StoriesUnityMergers, Acquisitions, & InvestmentsEAPublic Investment Fund (PIF)About the Author
Imran Khan
Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com
Imran Khan has been in the games industry in various forms for over two decades. He has been a former senior editor at Game Informer, a professional loudmouth at Kinda Funny, and news director at Fanbyte. He has also been doing PR for Vicarious PR and Head of U.S. PR for Japanese VR studio MyDearest, in addition to Producer work on their latest title Brazen Blaze.
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