A Company 4x Its Size? GameStop Wants to Buy eBay

"Ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish." That's how GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen described his next big move to The Wall Street Journal back in January, and now we know what he was talking about. According to a new report from the WSJ, GameStop is preparing to make an offer to acquire eBay, the online marketplace worth roughly four times as much as the gaming retailer.

Let that sink in for a second. GameStop, the company that closed over 590 U.S. stores in 2025 and kicked off 2026 by shuttering even more, wants to swallow a $46 billion e-commerce platform. GameStop's own market value sits around $11 billion. Its net sales last fiscal year were $3.6 billion, down from $3.8 billion the year prior. eBay pulled in $11.1 billion in revenue. This isn't David and Goliath; David is trying to eat Goliath whole.

Cohen's play isn't entirely delusional on paper, though. GameStop is sitting on roughly $9 billion in cash, a war chest built partly through years of capitalising on its meme stock status. Investor Michael Burry, who holds shares in the company, said earlier this year that Cohen "has a crappy business, and he is milking it best he can while taking advantage of the meme stock phenomenon to raise cash and wait for an opportunity to make a big buy of a real growing cash cow business." That's a brutal read, but it's also a pretty accurate description of what's happening here.

$9 Billion and a Dream

The WSJ report says GameStop has already been quietly accumulating eBay shares ahead of a formal bid, which could come as soon as late May. If eBay's board rejects the offer, Cohen may take it directly to shareholders, bypassing leadership entirely. Following the report, share prices for both companies rose, with eBay jumping over 11% and GameStop climbing about 6%.

I find it hard to see how this works for anyone who cares about games. GameStop's entire recent history has been a series of increasingly desperate pivots away from its core business. The NFT marketplace launched and died. Trade Anything Day turned stores into flea markets and infuriated employees. Cohen's own X account has devolved into Trump memes and culture war posts. Now the plan is to become an e-commerce conglomerate? Cohen's compensation package reportedly includes up to $35 billion in stock if GameStop's market value hits $100 billion, so the personal incentive is obvious. Whether this is good for the thousands of remaining GameStop employees or the customers who still walk into those stores is a different matter entirely.

Neither company has publicly commented on the reported plans. No agreement is in place, and the situation is described as fluid. But if Cohen does push forward with this bid, it would represent the most dramatic attempt yet to redefine what GameStop actually is. The 40-year-old billionaire warned us it would be bold. He also warned us it might be foolish. GameStop's operating income did recover to $232.1 million last fiscal year after years of losses, so the company is at least no longer bleeding money, but that margin of stability looks razor-thin next to a $46 billion acquisition target.