GameStop, the struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer with a market value of about $12 billion, wants to buy eBay, an e-commerce company worth around $46 billion.
This comes from a Wall Street Journal report which says that GameStop is quietly building up a stake in eBay shares in preparation for an offer that could come by the end of this month.
The report does not suggest what an offer would look like or how it would be received, though a source speaking to The WSJ suggested that GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen could take the offer directly to eBay’s shareholders if the company’s leadership isn’t interested.
GameStop’s most recent earnings report for the full year of 2025 has the company’s sales at $3.6 billion, down from $3.8 billion the year before, and its operating income finally in the black at $232.1 million after several years running in the red, with the company seeing an operating loss in 2024 of $26.2 million. Meanwhile eBay, which just reported its first quarter 2026 results, posted revenue of $3.1 billion for the quarter, up 19 percent year-over-year. The company’s full-year 2025 revenue was $11.1 billion, up 8 percent from the prior year.
GameStop has struggled over the last decade, initially due to a broad industry decline in physical game sales amid the rise of digital that only accelerated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What followed was several years of chaotic decision-making as multiple leaders attempted to get the company back on track. In 2021, following a short squeeze of GameStop’s stock that sent it sky-high for several weeks, then-CEO George Sherman announced he would step down, and Chewy founder Ryan Cohen joined the board. In 2022, GameStop launched an NFT marketplace, and then shut it down the following year. Then in 2023, Cohen took over as CEO with plans to revitalize the struggling business, which took the form of massive staff and store location cuts, selling some international operations, and griping about DEI for some reason. Most recently, GameStop has been touting a “return” to physical and retro games, including plans for “retro” sections in all its U.S. stores sometime this month. It’s also seemingly been interested in buying vast amounts of Bitcoin.
Today’s news comes following Cohen’s comments earlier this year that he wanted GameStop to acquire a major company in an effort to raise its market cap to $100 billion, a move which would earn him a $35 billion payout. Absurd as it seems for GameStop to pick up a much bigger and seemingly less chaotic company than itself, Cohen seems prepared to take a long, long shot. “It’s ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish,” he said in January of a potential acquisition.
Cohen has also long had a cult following in the investment community, more specifically among those interested in memestocks, and his actions in the past have led to unexpected investment surges based solely on his own choices, or even just his social media posts. Who knows what even a whisper about GameStop acquiring eBay will do to both companies’ stock prices?
