Ryan Cohen Just Put $56 Billion on the Table to Build Something That Has Amazon Running Scared
Every VC in Silicon Valley told Ryan Cohen his idea was dead on arrival.
Now that same man is bidding $56 billion for eBay – and Jeff Bezos has a reason to be nervous.
Cohen did this once before – and the people who laughed at him are still explaining why.
Ryan Cohen Beat Amazon Once Before and Nobody Believed Him Then Either
Ryan Cohen built Chewy from nothing. No venture capital. No Silicon Valley connections. Just a kid from Florida who walked into a pet store with his poodle and saw a billion-dollar opportunity nobody else would touch.
He approached over 100 venture capital firms.
Every single one turned him down.
They all said the same thing: Amazon will crush you.
Cohen ignored them. He built Chewy into the largest online pet retailer in America – hitting $900 million in sales and growing faster than any startup in history to reach that mark.
In 2017, he sold it to PetSmart for $3.35 billion – the largest e-commerce acquisition of all time.
The man who was supposed to get crushed by Amazon beat them anyway.
What the GameStop eBay Deal Actually Buys for $56 Billion
On Sunday, GameStop submitted a formal proposal to acquire eBay at $125 per share in a cash-and-stock deal – a 20% premium over eBay's Friday closing price.
Cohen has lined up $9.4 billion in GameStop's own cash plus a $20 billion debt commitment from TD Securities.
He has already quietly accumulated a 5% economic stake in eBay while the board wasn't looking.
Cohen told the Wall Street Journal he is prepared to take his case directly to shareholders in a proxy fight if eBay's board refuses to engage.
This is not a meme stock stunt.
The financing is real. The strategy is real. And Cohen said it out loud: his goal is to build "a legit competitor to Amazon" worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The GameStop eBay Takeover Strategy Amazon Cannot Copy
Here is what makes this dangerous for Amazon – and why Wall Street is waking up.
eBay's problem is not brand recognition. Almost every American knows what eBay is.
eBay's problem is corporate bloat. Flat buyer growth despite $2.4 billion in annual marketing spend. Layer after layer of management that chose metrics over results.
Cohen's plan targets $2 billion in annual cost cuts within 12 months of closing.
Then he does something Amazon's warehouse empire structurally cannot do: he plugs in GameStop's 1,600 physical U.S. store locations as authentication hubs, fulfillment centers, and live commerce venues for the collectors and sellers eBay was built to serve.
Authentication for collectibles. In-store drop-off. Human interaction.
Amazon has conquered the commodity. Cohen is betting the next frontier is everything Jeff Bezos cannot replicate with an algorithm.
What the Critics Are Missing
Yes, GameStop's market cap sits below $12 billion – less than a quarter of the $56 billion deal price.
The critics calling this impossible are the same people who said Chewy had no future.
Cohen has already thought past the financing gap. He told CNBC Monday morning that GameStop has the ability to issue stock to complete the deal, and he is exploring additional outside funding including sovereign wealth fund interest.
He will take no salary. No cash bonus. No golden parachute.
His compensation is tied 100% to the performance of the combined company.
That is not a Wall Street executive protecting quarterly numbers.
That is an entrepreneur betting everything on a conviction.
Why the GameStop eBay Acquisition Is the Fight Every Conservative Should Be Watching
Amazon controls 37.6% of all U.S. e-commerce.
eBay controls 3%.
Jeff Bezos built that gap not because he was smarter than everyone – but because he had the field almost entirely to himself while Washington looked the other way and every other potential competitor managed itself into irrelevance.
Cohen is the first person with the capital, the track record, and the nerve to actually try to close it.
He took on Amazon once when he had nothing and won.
Now he has $9.4 billion in cash, a $20 billion financing commitment, and 1,600 storefronts feeding into a platform with near-universal brand recognition.
The same establishment that wrote him off in 2011 is writing him off again today.
They were wrong then.
Sources:
- Fox Business, "GameStop Targets eBay in $56B Takeover Bid, Sees Path to Rival Amazon," Fox Business, May 4, 2026.
- Bloomberg, "GameStop Proposes to Buy eBay for About $56 Billion in Cash and Stock Deal," Bloomberg, May 3, 2026.
- GameStop Corp., "GameStop Proposes to Acquire eBay at $125.00 Per Share," investor.gamestop.com, May 4, 2026.
- Ryan Cohen, "The Secret Weapon Behind Chewy Founder Ryan Cohen's Success," Entrepreneur, 2020.
- Marketplace Pulse, "Top 10 E-Commerce Marketplaces in 2026," Marketplace Pulse, March 2026.
