A group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has held talks with Unity over a potential acquisition, according to Reuters sources.
The report claims that a group including PIF and Silver Lake – two of the same consortium that led the $55bn buyout of EA – had discussed a deal worth $25bn before Unity’s latest earnings report was published yesterday.
As the Reuters report points out, Silver Lake already owns 8% of Unity. The potential $25bn deal was discussed before Unity shares rose dramatically after it posted a profit for the first time since its IPO in yesterday’s earnings.
Buying up Unity would add another major games company to Saudi Arabia’s growing roster of companies that includes Scopely, EA, Moonton and several others.
It would also cement PIF’s continued interest in the mobile games market as a whole – the majority of mobile games are made in Unity and the firm’s recent revenue success has been built on mobile adtech like Vector.
As we reported yesterday, Unity posted its first profitable quarter since its IPO in Q326, boosted by its Vector ad platform.
Earlier this year Unity has sold its mobile game publishing arm Supersonic to Tripledot Studios for $40m, and more recently has struck deals to collaborate with Google on its prompt-to-game platform Playground and UA finance firm PvX Partners.
It’s also engaged in legal action with adtech rival AppLovin, which has accused Unity of harvesting data without permission.
