Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund held recent talks about buying Unity Software, but the parties had not reached a firm agreement by Nov. 6, 2026.
Those talks discussed a preliminary valuation of about $25 billion for Unity, above its market capitalization of approximately $21.5 billion following the company’s latest earnings report. Unity hired an investment bank to evaluate its options after the approach, and Reuters said terms could change with no transaction assured. Unity’s board has a duty to weigh alternatives. Unity said it would not comment on the talks, while Silver Lake and the Public Investment Fund did not immediately respond to Reuters.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund led a consortium that also included Silver Lake and Affinity Partners when it completed its acquisition of Electronic Arts on Aug. 4, 2026, for a reported $55 billion. Tbreak Media UAE said a deal for Unity would give the fund a second major gaming asset in quick succession after that take-private. Wccftech said the Electronic Arts deal ostensibly closed historic developer BioWare, while Tech Insider reported that the shutdown involved 400 cuts.
Silver Lake holds about an 8% stake in Unity from a roughly $400 million investment in 2017, and Egon Durban sits on Unity’s board. An existing shareholder with a board seat approaching Unity differs from an outsider’s cold bid. Durban, Silver Lake’s chief executive and managing partner, would usually step aside from any board vote on a sale. According to Wccftech, Affinity Partners holds 1.1% of EA, Silver Lake owns 5.5%, and the Public Investment Fund holds the remaining 93.4%; other sources have not published those ownership splits.
Unity posted its first quarterly profit under generally accepted accounting principles since its September 2020 IPO, with gains coming from its AI-powered Vector advertising platform, while revenue for the quarter climbed 32% to $622.1 million. Advertising and game development drove the growth, with the company competing against AppLovin in the ads business. The company leaned heavily into AI integration following the runtime fee dispute. The stock rose 6.6% to $52.04 in extended trading after climbing nearly 15% during the regular session on news of the talks.
The company ranks as the second-most popular games engine behind Unreal Engine and is also used in engineering and filmmaking; Wccftech said developers make more games with Unity than Unreal, especially on mobile. A buyer’s control of the engine would give it influence over an ecosystem that competitors also build on, inviting questions about neutrality. The 2023 runtime fee pricing plan hurt Unity’s reputation and preceded the resignation of former chief executive John Riccitiello.
Besides Electronic Arts, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund owns mobile studio Scopely and holds Nintendo, Capcom and Take-Two Interactive stakes. Its Savvy Games Group subsidiary has a memorandum of understanding, a pact with Unity to support game development in the kingdom. In September, reports said the fund was weighing a merger of Electronic Arts and Savvy Games Group.
The kingdom uses gaming for soft power while seeking to diversify beyond oil, including government ownership of Evo and its own eSports World Cup. Tech Insider’s ASGC tracker counted 10,977 layoffs across the games industry in 2026, exceeding the whole of 2025.
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