The video game retailer that meme traders saved from oblivion is now eyeing one of the internet’s oldest marketplaces. GameStop Corp is preparing a bid to acquire eBay Inc, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on 1 May 2026, sending eBay shares surging more than 13% in after-hours trading.
The move would be the most consequential step yet in CEO Ryan Cohen’s campaign to transform a struggling bricks-and-mortar chain into a diversified e-commerce powerhouse, and would test whether Wall Street is willing to finance one of the most improbable corporate pivots in recent memory.
eBay’s market capitalisation stands at roughly $46 billion. GameStop’s stock price, before the news broke, was about $12 billion. The arithmetic alone makes clear that Cohen is not proposing a friendly merger of equals; he is pursuing a company nearly four times GameStop’s size.
A quiet stake, an ambitious plan
GameStop has been quietly building a position in eBay shares ahead of a formal offer, the Journal reported. No details of the proposed deal structure or consideration have been confirmed, but sources told the paper the offer could be submitted as early as later in May. If eBay’s board is unreceptive, Cohen is prepared to take the bid directly to its shareholders.
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The financial fuel for any such deal would come largely from GameStop’s own balance sheet. The company ended the first quarter of 2026 with approximately $9 billion in cash and investments, up from $4.8 billion a year earlier, a war chest assembled through equity offerings and a disciplined retreat from unprofitable retail.
It is a sum that would not cover eBay’s price tag on its own, but it signals Cohen’s capacity to underwrite a significant portion of a deal without immediately diluting shareholders into oblivion.
Cohen, the Canadian entrepreneur who built pet supplies e-tailer Chewy from scratch before selling it in 2017 and later becoming GameStop’s chairman and CEO, has made no secret of his ambitions. In January 2026, GameStop’s board approved a performance-based stock option award valued by analysts at roughly $35 billion if fully earned, structured in nine tranches tied to escalating market capitalisation and earnings milestones.
The most demanding: GameStop must reach a $100 billion market value and generate $10 billion in cumulative EBITDA. Cohen draws no salary. If he fails, he receives nothing from the award.
That structure, described by some observers as a Musk-style moonshot incentive, explains both the audacity of the eBay approach and the pressure Cohen is under to manufacture transformative growth quickly. Acquiring eBay, with its established marketplace, 130 million active buyers, and payments infrastructure, would instantly reframe GameStop as something other than a retailer of used video games.
eBay has spent recent years slimming down, offloading its Classifieds business and StubHub ticketing division to focus on its core marketplace. That focus has made it leaner but also more legible as an acquisition target, with a relatively predictable revenue base and brand recognition that stretches back to the mid-1990s.
For Cohen, the attraction appears to be the combination of consumer reach and digital infrastructure, assets that would give a combined company genuine scale in the marketplace economy at a moment when Amazon’s dominance has made the sector feel settled, even stagnant. Whether eBay’s management and board share that enthusiasm remains to be seen. Neither company had commented publicly on the report at the time of writing.
What is clear is that the transaction, if pursued, would be financed partly in cash and almost certainly partly in GameStop equity, itself a volatile instrument whose value has historically moved more on retail investor sentiment than operational fundamentals. Convincing eBay shareholders to accept GameStop stock as part of any consideration would be a separate negotiation entirely.
The story of GameStop is not over. It may, in fact, be entering its strangest chapter yet.
