Yesterday, the Moneyfolk group, including the private investment company Silver Lake, the state investment fund in Saudi Arabia and the son -in -law of Donald Trump Jared Kushner published plans To purchase electronic art for about 55 billion dollars.
Buyers receive 36 billion dollars of their own capital (briefly and unusually, “capital” is the cost of your assets after you subtract everything you owe), including the cost of existing PIF investments in EA. They make up the remaining part of the total amount due to a loan of $ 20 billion from JPMorgan Chase Bank. How will they manage these huge debts? According to the Financial Times, which quote unnamed insiders, they play gambling in the deployment of generative tools of AI as a gigantic measure to save costs.
“Investors are betting on the fact that the reduction in expenses based on artificial intelligence will significantly increase EA profit in the coming years, people participating in the transaction wrote (Paywall) in its own coverage of history. In other places, it was commented that the acquisition “is a huge bet that artificial intelligence can significantly reduce the operational costs of EA, which will allow a consortium on shares to manage a large debt burden on a company, which historically wore a limited net debt”.
It is not surprising to hear that generative AI is part of the vision of the second coming of EA as a private company, although the situation with a loan by several billion dollars, of course, increases rates. Like Microsoft and Ubisoft, EA has already invested a lot of resources in generative tools of artificial intelligence, thanks to the initiatives such as the search for an extraordinary unit, and not a link to Mercs in Final Fantasy 7in the same way, whose efforts include This intriguing nightmare blog about the “Skull thread”Field
They also have In detail the technology advertised investorsIn a language that varies from dreams of “deeper”, richer ”experiences to a more quiet perspective“ to do what we do today faster, cheaper and with higher quality ”.
As early as May 2024, General Director Andrew Wilson The magnates were assured This generative AI will make the processes of developing the EA games more effective, commenting on the licensed football sims of the publisher that “we moved from the opportunity to create stadiums six months before six weeks,” and that the technology as a whole will allow developers to “get to pleasure faster”.
Efficiency, of course, does not mean “cutting staff”, but, like Microsoft clearly demonstratedReducing labor is a noticeable element of the great generative AI tomorrow. Wilson sounded about the stadium, appeared a few months after EA fired 5% of his labor – about 670 people – and about a year before the dismissal EA Another 300 people And closed one of his new studiosI am not sure that this is the extraordinary experience that people are looking for, Andrew.
Good luck that EA developers, focusing on all this. It is expected that the acquisition will be closed at the beginning of 2027 in anticipation of approval from regulatory authorities, which in itself could be a whole saga – Microsoft spent years, struggling with the US Federal Trade Commission in the courts after the announcement that they will acquire Blizzard Activision. For many EA teams, I suspect that the greatest concern can be how to be together with the investment wing of a well -known repressive country will affect their livelihood and work. If you are an EA employee, and you would like to talk about all this in anonymity, my email is in my biography.
