Monday, May 11, 2026
Dear Private Playbook Reader,
This week, three of the most powerful capital allocators on Earth agreed on something.
Silver Lake Partners. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Together they are paying $55 billion to take Electronic Arts private. The largest video game buyout in history.
The financial press called it a “gaming bet.” They missed the point entirely. This is not a bet on video games. It is a bet on 700 million registered users who pay every month, year after year, whether or not a new title ships. That is not a gaming company. That is a toll road with a joystick.
That is the B quadrant at full scale. And this week, the private markets are full of moves just like it. Here is what you need to know.
In today’s issue:
• Why Silver Lake paid $55 billion for a gaming company — and why games have nothing to do with it [The Deal Floor]
• The $660 million move Charles Schwab just made that quietly opened a door most retail investors do not know exists [The Crowdfunding Pulse]
• Blue Owl just cut its dividend. Here is what that tells you about private credit right now [The Private Credit Desk]
• You can claim your SpaceX stake today — before the IPO officially launches.
THE DEAL FLOOR
Private equity, venture, real assets
Silver Lake. The Saudi Public Investment Fund. Affinity Partners.
Three very different institutions agreed on one thing: Electronic Arts at $55 billion is worth more as a private company than a public one.
The deal closes June 30. EA has already begun its NASDAQ delisting. When it does, 700 million registered users, $7 billion in annual revenue, and some of the most valuable gaming intellectual property in the world disappears from public markets.
The mainstream read: a bold bet on gaming.
The real read: a bet on subscription cash flow. EA’s live-service model collects money every month. FIFA Ultimate Team alone generates over $1 billion per year. The games are the marketing. The subscriptions are the asset.
Banks sold $5.75 billion in syndicated loans to fund the deal. Private credit funds? Several reduced their orders or pulled out entirely. The smart money is buying the company. The lending market is getting cautious.
That is the B quadrant at scale. You do not buy the product. You buy the toll road.
Robert’s take: When the best capital allocators on Earth pay $55 billion for a business, they are not betting on hit games. They are buying recurring cash flow that does not depend on whether the next title ships. That is what assets do. They pay you whether you work or not.
THE CROWDFUNDING PULSE
Reg CF, Reg A+, platform intelligence
In March, Charles Schwab completed something that most investors completely missed.
The company paid $660 million for Forge Global Holdings: the leading marketplace for pre-IPO shares. Schwab now has the ability to offer pre-IPO access to 35 million individual accounts.
Most of those account holders have no idea that door just opened.
On the Reg CF side, the market contracted in Q1 2026. New offerings dropped 42 percent, from 286 deals to 165. Total capital raised fell 29 percent, to $72.4 million.
That is not a crisis. That is consolidation. Average deal sizes went up. Average investor commitments went up. Fewer deals, higher quality.
Wefunder leads weekly platform volume at $1.9 million per week. StartEngine saw Etherdyne Technologies oversubscribe its Reg CF raise in the final week, pulling in $1.2 million from 400 investors. The crowdfunding market is getting more selective. That is healthy.
The takeaway: The Schwab-Forge deal is the structural headline. The access gap between institutional and retail investors just got smaller. That matters more than one quarter of Reg CF volume data.
THE PRIVATE CREDIT DESK
BDCs, direct lending, credit markets
Blue Owl Capital Corporation just told you something important.
Its quarterly dividend was cut from $0.37 to $0.31. Net asset value fell $0.40 per share in a single quarter. Total investment income dropped $68 million year over year. The stock fell 6.2 percent after-hours.
That is what happens when you are a lender to private equity-backed software companies while (a) rates are falling, (b) AI is disrupting your borrowers’ valuations, and (c) a $20 billion maturity wall is coming in 2028.
Meanwhile, Ares Capital held its dividend at $0.48 per quarter. Core EPS came in at $0.47. Non-accruals ticked up modestly to 2.1 percent of portfolio cost. Available liquidity: $6 billion.
The structural story: banks are now competing directly with private credit funds. Bank of America committed $25 billion of its own balance sheet to direct lending deals. That is not a partnership. That is competition. The 200-basis-point cost gap between direct lending and syndicated loans is pushing borrowers back toward banks.
BDC investors: Know what you own. Not all private credit is the same. OBDC lends to smaller, riskier borrowers. ARCC has conservative underwriting and a $29.5 billion portfolio. The divergence in Q1 earnings tells you where the stress is concentrated.
SPONSORED: BROWNSTONE RESEARCH
SpaceX IPO Confirmed: Claim Your Stake Today
Elon Musk is about to take SpaceX public in what’s set to be the biggest IPO ever.
But there’s no need to wait for the company to go public (click here to claim your stake before the IPO launches).
THE IPO PIPELINE
S-1 filings, pre-IPO secondaries, upcoming debuts
SpaceX filed its confidential S-1 with the SEC on April 1.
The target: a June 2026 public debut. The implied valuation: $1.75 trillion. The raise: potentially $75 billion. That would be the largest IPO in stock market history. Not the largest tech IPO. The largest of any kind. Ever.
Twenty-one banks are lined up under the project code name “Project Apex.” JPMorgan. Goldman Sachs. Morgan Stanley. The machinery is in motion.
On the Forge Global secondary market, SpaceX shares are already pricing at $598.59 per share, implying a $1.42 trillion valuation. That is the crowd’s estimate before the roadshow. The public will see $1.75 trillion on the cover page of the prospectus.
Behind SpaceX: OpenAI is pricing at $840 billion implied. Anthropic at $380 billion. The three largest private AI companies in the world are all watching SpaceX’s debut before deciding their own timing.
The macro calendar matters here. CPI prints Tuesday. Iran remains a wildcard. Any bad print could shift the June timeline. The window is open. The question is how long it stays open.
The KPP angle: The Schwab-Forge acquisition means that for the first time, Schwab’s 35 million individual investors can access SpaceX secondary shares before the IPO. That access did not exist six months ago. The definition of “private market” just shifted.
THE CASHFLOW QUADRANT APPLIED
Real-world quadrant intelligence
Last week, Senator John Fetterman bought Micron Technology stock while sitting on the Senate Commerce Committee. His committee oversees the CHIPS Act that awarded Micron $6.165 billion in federal grants.
Representative Maria Salazar bought Boeing, GE Aerospace, and Honeywell while sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That committee receives classified briefings on defense procurement and arms sales.
Representative Greg Steube bought IonQ, a quantum computing company, while sitting on the House Intelligence Committee. That committee oversees DARPA programs in quantum technology.
The STOCK Act requires disclosure within 45 days of the trade. The system calls this transparency. A month and a half after the fact is not transparency. It is a 45-day head start.
Here is the quadrant lesson: E-quadrant thinking says use your job to get an edge. B/I-quadrant thinking says own the business or the asset outright. You do not need a committee seat when you own the toll road.
The rules of this game were written by people who play by B/I rules. They disclosed their E-quadrant behavior because the law requires it. They kept the B-quadrant strategy for themselves.
That is the unfair advantage. Now you have it too.
To your unfair advantage,
Robert Kiyosaki
Editor, Kiyosaki’s Private Playbook
P.S. The Silver Lake partners buying Electronic Arts for $55 billion are not waiting for public markets. The investors who got into SpaceX secondary shares are not waiting either. Forge now prices SpaceX at $1.42 trillion. The public will see $1.75 trillion at IPO. Before that happens, there is a way to get positioned. See your options before the IPO launches.
© 2026 Kiyosaki’s Private Playbook, an imprint of Freedom Financial Research, LLC
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