GameStop Bids $55.5 Billion for eBay: Ryan Cohen’s Latest Gigantic Gamble

If you thought Ryan Cohen’s move to turn GameStop into some kind of e-commerce powerhouse was over, think again. On Sunday afternoon, May 4, GameStop announced a surprise takeover bid for eBay at $125 per share — a deal valued at roughly $55.5 billion (£40.9 billion).

The Deal Structure

Here’s what makes this genuinely bizarre. The offer is 50% cash, 50% stock — and when you break down the financing, the numbers don’t add up as neatly as Cohen would have you believe.

According to the terms, GameStop would use about $9.4 billion in cash from its balance sheet (down from $9.4 billion in cash and liquid investments as of January 31, 2026), secure $20 billion in debt financing commitments from TD Securities, and offer stock valued at roughly $11.9 billion (based on GameStop’s current market cap). That totals about $40 billion of the $55.5 billion offer — leaving a $16 billion hole.

When CNBC’s Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Cohen about this gap on Squawk Box on Monday morning, he just said: “I don’t understand your question.”

Cohen’s Potential payday

Here’s where it gets even more interesting — for Cohen personally. He’ll take zero salary, zero bonuses, and no golden parachute. Instead, his compensation is tied to the performance of the combined company. At a $100 billion combined market valuation, Cohen stands to make up to $35 billion in stock.

That’s a potential $35 billion payday on a compensation structure that starts at exactly $0.

The Strategy (If You Can Call It That)

Cohen’s vision: GameStop’s roughly 1,600 remaining US stores (down from 2,325 at the start of 2025 after closing 590 last year) would become “a national network for authentication, intake, fulfillment, and live commerce.” Sellers could bring items to GameStop locations for on-site verification, listings would carry a “trust badge,” and eBay would integrate livestream selling.

“It could be a legit competitor to Amazon,” Cohen told the WSJ in January. “eBay should be worth — and will be worth — a lot more money.”

What Everyone Else Thinks

The market’s reaction was predictably lukewarm. GameStop’s shares fell over 8-10% on Monday (despite the enormous premium being offered), while eBay rose just 5% — not exactly a vote of confidence in the deal’s value.

Prediction markets are even more skeptical. Kalshi prices the deal at 26% probability of completion in 2026, while Polymarket puts it at a mere 15%. Trading volume on Kalshi was just ~$2,000 — basically nobody’s betting on this.

Morgan Stanley analysts noted the two companies have “fundamentally different” business models. Bernstein was blunt: they’d be “surprised if anything became of it.”

Michael Burry — who’s already shown his appetite for seeing things through Cohen that didn’t go as planned — commented: “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.”

Sucharita Kodali of Forrester said it most clearly: “We are not necessarily putting two strong companies together.”

The Bitcoin Question

GameStop held roughly $368 million in Bitcoin on its balance sheet — its future in the combined company is unclear. Cohen had pulled GameStop out of cryptocurrency in August 2023, shutting the NFT marketplace, but the remaining BTC stake could be critical to funding the acquisition. Cohen may need to liquidate it (or go cap-in-hand to Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds, as the WSJ reported) to cover that $16 billion financing gap.

The Real Story

This is Ryan Cohen trying to pull off the biggest financial magic trick of the decade: using a $12 billion video game retailer with a $16 billion financing gap to acquire a $46 billion e-commerce giant, while taking zero salary and expecting everyone to believe it’s all about synergy.

The question isn’t whether this will happen. The answer is almost certainly no. The question is whether Cohen can keep the market distracted long enough that nobody notices he’s milking GameStop’s massive cash pile while trying to make it happen.

Either way, it’s going to be a fascinating few months.

Sources: BBC News, GameStop Investor Relations, CNBC, The Guardian, IGN