Silver Lake and PIF reportedly held talks to buy Unity, which has just turned a GAAP profit

US-based game engine company Unity (NYSE: U) held recent talks to be acquired by a consortium including private equity firm Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, Reuters reported on Nov 5, citing people familiar with the matter. Silver Lake and PIF approached Unity in recent weeks and discussed a valuation of ~$25.0B before its latest earnings report. Unity has been working with an investment bank to evaluate its options, and no deal is certain. Its shares were up about 4% in extended trading after the report, Reuters said. 

Unity reported its third-quarter results before the market opened on Nov 5, its first GAAP-profitable quarter since its IPO.

Unity calls the business it is keeping “Strategic”: $597m of revenue, 96% of the total, up 59% YoY. It leaves out the ironSource Ads network, which Unity shut down in the second quarter, and Supersonic, its game publisher, sold on Aug 4. Unity says its Vector ad engine grew 126% YoY. It guided Q4 revenue of $688m to $696m and adj. EBITDA of $290m to $295m, and held $2.6B in cash against $2.2B of convertible notes at Sep 30.

The shares rose 14.9% to $48.80 during the session on Nov 5, hours before Reuters published, and gained another 5.5% to $51.49 on Nov 6, the first session after the report. That close is 36.6% above the Oct 30 close of $37.70.

Silver Lake announced an investment of up to $400m in Unity in May’17, when Egon Durban, now its Co-CEO, joined Unity’s board, and in Nov’22 it bought most of the $1.0B of 2.0% convertible notes due 2027 that Unity issued with the ironSource merger. A second Silver Lake executive also sits on the board, and Silver Lake funds held about 8% of Unity’s shares in August. Reuters noted that Durban would typically recuse himself from board deliberations on a sale, Reuters noted. In Aug’22, Unity’s board rejected an unsolicited proposal from AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) to stay with the ironSource merger. 

Silver Lake and PIF recently made a deal together: in Sep ’25, they agreed with Affinity Partners to take Electronic Arts private at an enterprise value of ~$55.0B, and the deal closed in Aug’26.