GameStop Now Owns 10 Percent of eBay, and Ryan Cohen Says He Is Coming for the Rest

GameStop just crossed the 10 percent line on eBay. The video game retailer, turned meme stock, turned collectibles pawnshop, now owns 9.8 percent of the online auction giant, according to a Schedule 13D filed with the SEC on Friday, July 17. That is roughly 5 billion dollars of eBay stock, sitting on GameStop's books. For context, that is about half of GameStop's own total market cap, and the disclosure puts Ryan Cohen, GameStop's CEO and chairman, on a glide path toward the kind of formal activist-investor play Wall Street has not taken seriously since he first floated the idea back in May.

Cohen has not been subtle about it. In a Bloomberg interview this week, recorded by Ed Ludlow, he told the host, I am not going to call my shots, but we are coming for eBay one way or another. He included a transcript of that exchange in the regulatory filing itself, which is the activist-investor equivalent of putting a giant banner on the front lawn. GameStop confirmed the stake in its 13D amendment, and eBay now has to formally decide whether to treat the largest single outside shareholder as a nuisance or a negotiating partner. eBay already rejected Cohen's earlier 56 billion dollar buyout offer in May, calling it neither credible nor attractive. That was before Cohen held 9.8 percent of the company. It is a different conversation now.

What the SEC Filing Actually Says

The 13D is the form a buyer files once they cross 5 percent of a public company. It requires disclosing the buyer's identity, the source of the money, and the buyer's plans for the company. GameStop's filing confirms a 9.8 percent stake with full voting rights, acquired after GameStop exercised a series of call and put option pairs on eBay stock during the week of July 13. That matters because options are a cheap way to build exposure quickly without tipping your hand. The filing also confirms that Cohen, personally, now holds a meaningful direct position, on top of GameStop's institutional position. As of the latest shareholder tallies, GameStop sits in the same league as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the Big Three index holders. GameStop now holds 43.39 million eBay shares. That is not an activist dabble. That is a serious seat at the table.

Why a Game Store Wants an Auction Site

Cohen's pitch is the same one he has been making since spring. He plans to buy eBay, gut its cost structure the way he gutted GameStop's, install himself as CEO of the combined entity, and use the resulting platform to compete with Amazon in physical goods resale. He told Bloomberg the merged business could eventually be worth a trillion dollars. eBay already told him no. The board said the proposal dramatically undervalues eBay and is highly conditional. Cohen, in true meme stock fashion, replied by buying more stock. He is now the single largest non-index holder of the company, and he has publicly committed to making life uncomfortable for the board until they either negotiate or he finds a way to force a shareholder vote on the question of selling.

What the Community Is Saying

Reaction on X is precisely the kind of gleeful, slightly unhinged chorus you would expect from the GameStop investor base. Top posts are running the 1 million to 6 million view range. A common thread is mock confusion at eBay's earlier dismissal of the offer. One widely shared post wrote, paraphrased: GameStop asked eBay if it could buy it for 125 billion, eBay said too cheap, so GameStop bought 9.8 percent for 101 billion, and now eBay is screaming. That is the energy. Financial commentators are pointing out the regulatory milestones that come next. At 10 percent, Cohen has to start filing short-swing profit disclosures. At 15 percent, he would have to disclose his plans more fully. He does not have the cash to buy eBay outright, so the bet is that the stock price will move on his activism, that a bulge bracket bank will eventually line up financing, and that the meme stock community's sheer stubbornness will keep his position solvent long enough for a negotiated deal to surface.

There is genuine skepticism underneath the jokes, though. The financial press is openly asking how the math works. GameStop's market cap is roughly half the size of the eBay stake it just bought. Even with the 2 billion dollars in cash GameStop raised by selling shares during the 2024 and 2025 meme stock rallies, the company cannot finance an eBay acquisition on its own. A hostile takeover at this scale typically needs a strategic partner, a special purpose acquisition company, or a leveraged buyout sponsor. Cohen has not named one. He has not said what his exit looks like if eBay's board continues to refuse. He has not addressed what happens to eBay's existing seller community, the small businesses that rely on the platform, if GameStop's notoriously cut hard approach to cost cutting hits them. Those are not small questions.

What It Means for the People Who Actually Buy Games at GameStop

The gaming angle here is more important than the financial angle, even if the financial angle is what is breaking this week. GameStop is, in 2026, mostly a collectibles and trading card business. Software sales are under 12 percent of revenue, down from 70 percent a decade ago. Trading cards, Funko Pops, and other physical collectibles are over 50 percent. That is the model that worked, and it is the model Cohen is now saying he wants to extend to eBay's much larger marketplace. If the takeover ever happens, the obvious near-term effect is a tighter integration between GameStop's in-store trade-in counter and eBay's online listings. Picture walking into a GameStop, trading in your old Switch games, and watching them list on eBay in real time, with GameStop taking a cut of the sale. That is the optimistic version. The pessimistic version is that GameStop's already thin staffing gets even thinner, that eBay seller fees go up to fund the synergy plan, and that the used game and retro game collector market, which is huge on eBay, gets squeezed by the same playbook that turned GameStop from a 7,000 store chain into a 3,000 store chain. There is also the question of what happens to the collectibles market itself. eBay is already the largest single channel for graded Pokemon cards, retro games, and the kind of high-end Funko drops that GameStop itself depends on. A combined entity would control the supply chain, the grading services, and the marketplace. That is a lot of leverage in one place.

The honest read is that the takeover is probably going to happen, in some form, because Cohen does not appear to be the type to back off, and the meme stock community is not going to let the position go without a fight. The form is the question. A negotiated merger at a higher price than the May offer is the most likely outcome. A hostile proxy fight is the second most likely. A full leveraged buyout is the most unlikely, because the financing does not exist yet. Whatever shape it takes, it is the strangest corner of the gaming industry right now, and the one with the most leverage to actually reshape how physical games, cards, and collectibles move from a shelf to a buyer over the next 18 months. We will be watching the next 13D amendment, the next earnings call, and the next Bloomberg interview for any sign of a partner showing up. Until then, the question on every retail investor's mind is the same one the editorial board at Kotaku asked this week: how does the math math. It does not, yet. Cohen is betting it will.