Ryan Cohen, the unpredictable chief executive of GameStop and a folk hero of the 2021 meme-stock boom, has set his sights on a target several times larger than his own company: the online marketplace eBay. Cohen wants to buy it for roughly $56 billion in cash and stock — an audacious figure given that GameStop's own market capitalisation sits at only about $11 billion, a fraction of eBay's. The gulf between the two companies, observers note, is not merely one of size but also of stability and predictability. GameStop is a shrinking video-game retailer; eBay, despite being seen as a laggard in innovation compared with Amazon and newer platforms like Vinted, remains one of the largest global online marketplaces.
The financing math is daunting. Cohen has lined up close to $40 billion: a $20 billion commitment from TD Bank, around $9 billion of cash on GameStop's balance sheet, and roughly $10.7 billion worth of GameStop stock. That still leaves a $16 billion financing gap, most likely to be filled through additional stock issuance — a step that would dilute existing shareholders. For most companies, a hole that size would be prohibitive. But GameStop is not most companies. Its retail investor base has, in the past, shown an unusual willingness to support management through unconventional capital raises, and Cohen is betting that loyalty holds.
The pitch rests on Cohen's reputation. He made his fortune through the $3.4 billion sale of online pet retailer Chewy — which he co-founded in 2011 — to PetSmart in 2017. After buying a 10 per cent stake in GameStop and joining the board in 2021, he was named chair within six months and recast the struggling bricks-and-mortar chain as an ecommerce turnaround story, hiring senior executives from Amazon and exploiting the meme-stock surge to issue billions in new equity. People who have done business with him call the eBay gambit a 'quintessential' Cohen move. As one source put it, he is 'a bit of a cowboy' — hard to deal with, but successful.
Still, the lack of obvious synergies between two companies in different industries is, as one law professor described it, 'a bit of a head scratcher from a textbook perspective.' Eric Talley, a law professor at Columbia Law School, called it unusual for a 'small kind of minnow company' to try to 'eat the whale.' Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said the upfront financial commitment is so large that closing the deal probably depends on yet another meme-stock surge — something she is sceptical will materialise.
The most striking defection is Michael Burry, the 'Big Short' investor who bet against the U.S. housing market before the 2008 crisis. Burry had until recently been one of Cohen's more prominent supporters. That has abruptly changed: he wrote on his blog that GameStop, burdened with billions in interest expense and loan covenants restricting its movements, would not be 'breaking new ground' but rather 'trotting in well-worn ruts on the road to capitalist hell.' Cohen had a chance to answer critics in a CNBC interview but offered little detail on financing, sparring with the hosts instead. His supporters online accused the mainstream media of running a 'hit job.' Whether the bid succeeds or collapses, it is a defining test of whether meme-era CEOs can convert internet enthusiasm into real corporate power.
Imagine a minnow trying to eat a whale — then borrowing $16 billion to do it. That's roughly what GameStop's CEO Ryan Cohen is attempting with eBay, and Wall Street is stunned.
Ryan Cohen, the meme-stock-era CEO of GameStop, is trying to engineer a $56 billion cash-and-stock takeover of eBay — a company more than four times GameStop's size. GameStop is worth about $11 billion; eBay's market cap dwarfs it.
Cohen has already quietly built a 5% stake in eBay. To finance the rest, GameStop is leaning on roughly $20 billion committed by TD Bank, $9 billion in cash, and $10.7 billion of its own stock. That still leaves a $16 billion financing gap that would likely have to be filled by issuing more shares.
This is less a normal merger and more a high-stakes gambit that depends on the unusual loyalty of GameStop's retail-investor base. Two parallels make the mechanics clearer:
If you've ever bought or sold something on eBay — or watched the GameStop saga in the 2021 Netflix-doc era — this deal sits at the exact intersection of those two worlds. It's also a live test of whether retail investors (regular people trading on apps like Robinhood) can actually move corporate America, not just stock prices. For anyone considering finance, business, or even law, this is a case study being written in real time.
Even if the bid fails, it signals a new era where 'meme' companies use inflated share prices as acquisition currency to grab legacy businesses — a tactic AOL famously used to buy Time Warner in 2000 (which ended badly). Watch for: whether eBay's board formally rejects, whether GameStop's stock holds up under the dilution required to issue $16 billion in new shares, and whether other meme-era CEOs try similar moves. The second-order risk is a wave of mismatched mergers built on vibes rather than fundamentals.