Private equity megadeals rang up record transaction value in 2025

The $55.2 billion acquisition of video game developer Electronic Arts Inc. led a record year of private equity M&A megadeals.

The Silver Lake Technology Management LLC-, Public Investment Fund- and A Fin Management LLC-backed deal was the largest of 22 private equity acquisitions worth at least $5 billion announced in 2025, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Their combined value of those megadeals totaled a record $311.08 billion.

The trends driving ever-larger private equity deals are so strong that today's records are unlikely to stand for long, said Scott Voss, a managing director at HarbourVest Partners LLC.

"EA is the largest [private equity] buyout deal ever at $50 billion. I think we're going to see multiple $50 billion buyouts," Voss said.

Scaling capital

Don Zambarano, accounting and advisory firm KPMG's US sector leader for private equity, cited capital concentration in the largest private equity funds as "one of the fundamental structural changes that's happening in the industry that's supporting more, larger megadeals getting done."

Institutional limited partners underpin a flight-to-quality trend that has resulted in big brand-name firms raising ever larger amounts. Many of these investors are paring back fund manager relationships and allocating more capital to the giant alternative asset managers who can offer a variety of fund strategies — like private credit, growth or infrastructure investing, in addition to private equity — as well as low-fee co-investment opportunities.

"We are finding institutions consolidating their relationships. They want to do more with fewer partners," Scott Nuttall, co-CEO of KKR & Co. Inc., said last year on the firm's second-quarter earnings call.

The 10 largest private equity funds to close in 2025 gathered $161.90 billion in commitments from investors, equivalent to one-third of the $480.29 billion raised by all private equity funds globally last year.

Deploying those billions in dribs and drabs is both time-consuming and inefficient, so sourcing megadeals becomes an imperative for managers of super-sized funds, Zambarano said. And as acquisition targets scale, so do the opportunities for private equity-style value creation.

"There are more and larger levers to pull to drive that transformation. The levers are there on every business, but they're larger and clearer and more opportunistic at the top end of the market," Zambarano said.

Supersize take-privates

The global private equity industry entered 2025 with global dry powder reserves in excess of $2 trillion — just barely down from an all-time high. With all of that capital available to deploy into deals, Zambarano said, tailwinds are rising for take-private transactions.

Five of the 10 largest private equity-backed megadeals in 2025 were public-to-private transactions, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. That includes both the EA sports acquisition and the second-largest private equity megadeal announced last year: Sycamore Partners Management LP's $41.8 billion acquisition of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. from Alliance Santé Participations SA.

Sovereign wealth funds also flexed their muscles in 2025, investing alongside private equity funds in five of the 10 largest megadeals.

– Download a file of raw data from this story. – Read about the 2025 increase in global private equity deal value. – Scan the latest private markets headlines.

Megadeal trends

Seventeen of the 22 private equity-backed megadeals announced in 2025 targeted acquisitions in the US or Canada, up from eight in 2024. The number of such transactions declined year-over-year in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

The technology, media and telecommunications sector has consistently produced the largest number of private equity-backed megadeals since at least 2020, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.