Jake Rosen Just Sold His Creator Agency to Private Equity. That's 118 Deals This Year, Against 93 in All of 2025.

A private equity firm with $76 billion under management spent Friday morning explaining why it just bought a talent agency in New York.

H.I.G. Small-Cap & Growth, the growth capital affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, announced on November 13 the formation of Waveborn, a creator economy investment platform built to scale through acquisitions, and said Waveborn had acquired Jake Rosen's creator management firm Jake Rosen Entertainment as its foundational asset. Terms were not disclosed.

That deal is not an outlier. It is a data point in the busiest year this industry has ever had. Quartermast Advisors has counted 118 deals involving creator economy companies so far in 2026, compared with 93 in all of 2025; in its annual report on 2025 deals, talent management firms accounted for 13.6% of acquisitions.

What $76 billion is actually buying

Not software. Not a course platform. A roster.

JRE brings Waveborn more than 400 exclusive creators with more than one billion combined followers across family, food, education, beauty and fashion. The agency says it has completed more than 24,000 brand deals with companies including Disney, Chipotle and McDonald's, and that it averages nearly 100 new deals per week. It focuses on mid-tier to macro creators.

Read that again with an owner's eye. The asset being purchased is a repeatable commercial machine with a hundred transactions a week running through it, not any single famous face.

"Creators are displacing traditional media, and we're designing Waveborn to provide more sophisticated offerings to creators and brands that support how the industry has evolved," said Eric Tencer, Managing Director at H.I.G. Growth. Rosen, JRE's CEO, said joining Waveborn lets the firm "scale the business for both creators and brands" and tap H.I.G.'s M&A experience.

Three buyers in six weeks

Eleven days before the Waveborn announcement, Velocity Capital Management said it had acquired a stake in the combined LV8 and Mirage businesses, both founded by Griffin Haddrill, who stays on as CEO. The pairing puts LV8's social-first brand agency alongside Mirage's network of 70-plus owned channels. Adweek reported the newly combined firm raised equity funding "in the high eight figures" from Velocity, according to Haddrill. The combined company said it would also pursue acquisitions.

In October, Live Nation backed Creator Nation, co-founded by Scott and Alexis Fisher, which will acquire and grow creator management firms and adjacent businesses, with a first acquisition likely before year-end. "Scott and Alexis understand how to help talent build those businesses for the long term," said Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino. And in June, CAA and Integrated Media Company formed Compound Creative Holdings, a $250 million holding company set up to acquire and operate creator-led media businesses.

Three vehicles. Same thesis. Buy the relationship layer and bolt services onto it.

The number knowledge-business owners want

Quartermast counted 70 transactions in the first half of 2026, up 23% year over year, with media (27%), software (24%), agencies (21%) and talent management (14%) drawing the most buyers, and most companies trading at 5x to 9x EBITDA.

Five to nine times profit. That is the honest frame for anyone who has mentally priced their own course business over a second coffee.

It is also where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Creator economy companies have historically failed to meet private equity's criteria for mature businesses or reach the scale these investors need, and strategic buyers such as ad holding companies and talent agencies often pay more than financial buyers do. Quartermast founder James Creech, who was not involved in the JRE transaction, said private equity's role so far mostly means backing or creating acquirers, such as Eldridge-backed Fixated and Content Partners-backed Wonderloom Media.

What gets bought is infrastructure: contracts, rosters, owned channels, recurring revenue, a team that keeps selling when the founder is on holiday. A business of one person, one face and one email list has none of that in a form an acquirer can own.

It has a job. A very good job, possibly. Just not an asset.

The tell is in JRE's category list. Education is right there beside beauty and food — teaching creators, already represented, already inside a roster that a $76 billion firm just decided was worth buying.