Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and a group of large investors are in talks to buy out the video game company Electronic Arts in what could be one of the largest such deals ever, according to two people briefed on the discussion.
Mr. Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, along with other investors including the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and Silver Lake Partners are in talks to take the publicly traded company private.
The people, who requested anonymity because the talks are confidential, said a deal could value the company, the maker such popular games as Madden N.F.L. and Battlefield, at around $50 billion.
The talks come as deal making is roaring back to life on Wall Street after executives took a pause during the stock gyrations that followed the introduction of President Trump’s tariff plans last spring. Soaring stocks, and renewed optimism that financiers can get their deals approved by regulators in the Trump administration, have led many to reconsider big transactions.
Among the deals announced in the last few months are Union Pacific’s $85 billion deal for Norfolk Southern and Keurig Dr Pepper’s $18 billion acquisition of Peet’s.
Shares of Electronic Arts rose nearly 15 percent on Friday after The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks, giving it a market value of around $48 billion.
The talks are expected to put a renewed spotlight on Affinity Partners, which Mr. Kushner, who is President Trump’s son-in-law, founded after Mr. Trump’s first term. The firm’s investors include the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund, a relationship that has drawn scrutiny because Mr. Kushner used to deal with the Saudi government while he was serving as an official in the first Trump administration. The wealth fund is also longtime investor in Electronic Arts.
Representatives for Silver Lake, Affinity Partners, the Public Investment Fund and Electronic Arts did not respond to requests for comment.
Buyouts typically allow large investors to use debt to acquire an underperforming public company, make changes to improve performance and then resell the company at a higher price.
The size of a buyout of Electronic Arts could top the largest private deal thus far, the 2007 purchase of Texas utility TXU for around $32 billion.
The deal would come as the games industry is going through a period of significant upheaval. Young generations of players are embracing mobile and free-to-play games, and moving away from the type of expensive, blockbuster franchises that Electronic Arts has long been known for producing. Many of E.A.’s largest titles, like Battlefield, FIFA and Madden, can take years of development and hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.
In 2025, the company has reported disappointing sales in some of its marquee titles, including the soccer game EA Sports FC and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, an action-based role playing game.
Other E.A. titles like Apex Legends, a free-to-play series that allows users to purchase additional features and in-game items, have a large following but are not making as much money as anticipated, the company said in an earnings call earlier this year.
Private investors see opportunity in E.A.’s suite of intellectual property. Porting some of those marquee titles to mobile devices and making them free-to-play, but then charging players for certain features in the game, could help them reach a wider audience of new users.
In recent years, the Saudi wealth fund has increasingly focused on mobile games. In 2021, the fund created Savvy Games Group to spearhead its planned $38 billion investment in the industry. The Saudi fund owns Scopely, the company behind Monopoly Go, and Niantic, maker of the hit mobile game Pokémon Go. Both have leveraged popular intellectual properties into enormously successful mobile games.
Such drastic strategic moves would likely cut into E.A.’s quarterly profits, a difficult proposition for executives who face the scrutiny of the public markets. A take-private deal could give the company the ability to make significant overhauls without the demands of quarterly earnings reports.
“They’re going to take it private and they’re going to do what they’ve got to do to make this work,” Michael Pachter, managing director of Wedbush Securities who closely follows the games industry, said in an interview.
Earlier this year Electronic Arts shuttered some of its games studios and canceled previously announced upcoming titles, such as the Black Panther game based on the Marvel Studios film, and scrapped another game, Titanfall, that had been in development.
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
Mike Isaac is The Times’s Silicon Valley correspondent, based in San Francisco. He covers the world’s most consequential tech companies, and how they shape culture both online and offline.
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