Big private equity money is moving deeper into the creator business. According to Business Insider‘s Lucia Moses, private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, which has $76 billion in capital under management, has formed a new company called Waveborn to buy up creator-economy businesses. Its first purchase is New York creator management firm Jake Rosen Entertainment, better known as JRE.

What Waveborn is buying

The deal runs through H.I.G. Small-Cap & Growth, the firm’s growth capital arm, and the price wasn’t disclosed. As citybiz reports, H.I.G. also didn’t say how much money it has set aside for Waveborn or when the next acquisitions might happen.

What it did share is the size of JRE. In its announcement, H.I.G. said JRE represents more than 400 exclusive creators in family, food, education, beauty and fashion, with more than a billion combined followers. The agency says it has closed more than 24,000 brand deals with names like Disney, Chipotle and McDonald’s, and averages close to 100 new deals a week. (The company boilerplate at the bottom of the same release lists a combined following of over 800 million, so treat the billion figure as the company’s own headline number.)

Business Insider notes that JRE was founded in 2019 and has 25 employees.

One roof for the whole creator business

The plan is to use JRE as the base and bolt on other companies. H.I.G. says Waveborn will combine four pieces of the creator business: talent management, brand relationships, content production and creator monetization. Brands would get one partner for campaigns and production, and creators would get more ways to make money and grow their businesses.

“The creator economy is a rapidly growing ecosystem where brand dollars are finally catching up to attention and consumption,” Eric Tencer, managing director at H.I.G. Growth, said in the announcement. “Creators are displacing traditional media.”

Tencer told Business Insider that his own household helped convince him. His two kids, in 10th and 7th grade, skip regular TV and movies and go “straight to TikTok and Instagram,” he said. He also explained why a talent agency came first: putting creators at the center would help H.I.G. figure out what to build next.

The companies pointed to Whalar Group as the kind of business they want to build. Per Business Insider, Whalar combined an agency, talent management and influencer tech, was valued at $400 million in 2025, and sold its agency to Accenture Song earlier this year.

Why Rosen went with private equity

Rosen said he started a sales process earlier this year and chose the private equity route because it would let him stay involved in future deals and in JRE’s growth. He told Business Insider the corporate buyers he spoke with wanted him to adapt to their processes. “Having a seat at the table, and to be able to have that voice for the future, was something that was really important to me,” he said.

He also framed the deal as a way to keep creators from walking. “I never want one of our creators to leave us for a different agency because they say, ‘I want to go to them because you’re not able to offer X services,'” Rosen said.

A bet on the middle class of creators

JRE focuses on mid-tier to macro creators, and Rosen is bullish on that group. “A lot of brands on the high side do not want to risk their entire budget on one mega creator,” he told Business Insider. On the other end, he said, working with micro creators means a brand or agency may have to manage 100 creators on one campaign.

The bigger picture explains the timing. Business Insider cites Interactive Advertising Bureau figures showing US creator ad spending is on track to hit $44 billion this year, growing four times as fast as media overall. James Creech, founder of advisory firm Quartermast, who wasn’t involved in the deal, said private equity is still a small but growing player in the space, often by backing companies that then go on to buy others, as with Fixated and Wonderloom Media. “Other private equities have the same thesis,” Creech said. Quartermast counts 118 creator-economy deals so far in 2026, compared with 93 in all of 2025.

The takeaway

When a $76 billion investment firm builds a company around a talent agency, it tells you the creator business is being treated like a real industry now, not a side hustle. For mid-sized creators, that could mean more services and bigger brand budgets under one roof. It also means the agency on the other side of your contract may soon answer to investors who expect growth. If your management changes hands, read the new terms closely and ask what’s actually changing for you.

Image: “Wall Street Sign Close-up with American Flags” by Billie Grace Ward, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).