10 hours ago
Shortly after Unity’s 2020 IPO everything began to go wrong. They made several acquisitions which didn’t work out, including purchasing Weta Digital for $1.6B and Ziva Dynamics, both of which were ultimately closed. Eventually the stock got so bad they were more or less forced to merge with IronSource in 2022. Then of course we had the Unity runtime fee fiascothat almost destroyed the company. In the resulting fallout the CEO was fired, almost the entire board of directors was reshuffled and the entirety of IronSource leadership was removed.
Then Unity started a redemption arc and things have steadily been improving, both for Unity developers and for Unity stock holders. In fact just yesterday Unity announced their first ever profit since going public all the way back in 2020! Unity seemingly had righted the ship, was working on making developers happy again and were going in a good direction financially… what could possibly go wrong?
Enter Silver Lake Partners (the largest existing Unity shareholder, at 8%) and PIF, also known as the Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. For gamers, the combination of Silver Lake and PIF might sound familiar, because they recently teamed up to take Electronic Arts private and almost fully under PIF ownership. Now it is being reported that Silver Lake and PIF are interest in purchasing Unity. The original source was Reuters, which paywalled the article, so here is IGN coverage:
You can learn more about the PIF and Silver Lake potential offer to take Unity private in the
below.
Then Unity started a redemption arc and things have steadily been improving, both for Unity developers and for Unity stock holders. In fact just yesterday Unity announced their first ever profit since going public all the way back in 2020! Unity seemingly had righted the ship, was working on making developers happy again and were going in a good direction financially… what could possibly go wrong?
Enter Silver Lake Partners (the largest existing Unity shareholder, at 8%) and PIF, also known as the Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. For gamers, the combination of Silver Lake and PIF might sound familiar, because they recently teamed up to take Electronic Arts private and almost fully under PIF ownership. Now it is being reported that Silver Lake and PIF are interest in purchasing Unity. The original source was Reuters, which paywalled the article, so here is IGN coverage:
Quote:A consortium of investors including private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF has held recent talks to acquire gaming software provider Unity.
A Reuters report citing confidential sources familiar with the matter states that PIF and Silver Lake, the latter of which already owns 8% of Unity, approached the company in recent weeks. The buyer consortium discussed a valuation of about $25 billion before Unity’s latest earnings report, which lifted its market capitalization to roughly $21.5 billion.
Unity has reportedly been consulting with an investment bank to evaluate its options following the approach, however talks are preliminary and no deal is assured.
Should the acquisition go ahead, this would be another major investment into the games industry for Silver Lake and PIF. The two firms previously teamed up with Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners to acquire Electronic Arts for $55 billion in a deal that was finalised in August. Since then the publisher has initiated major corporate restructurings and studio closures, most recently shutting development studio BioWare and cancelling the next Mass Effect game.
You can learn more about the PIF and Silver Lake potential offer to take Unity private in the
below.