The company announced its intention to buy the e-commerce giant for $125 per stock, which is a 46 percent premium to eBay’s closing stock price on February 4, 2026. The deal values eBay at about $55.5 billion, leaving everyone asking the same question: Where will GameStop, which has its own market cap of about $11.8 billion, get so much money?
To understand this we have to take a step back. Once a giant with over 6,000 stores globally, GameStop began to decline in the 2010s as people began getting their games primarily from the Internet. This made it one of the most undervalued stocks of all time, with investors betting that its value would decline further as its business continued to decline.
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However, in 2021, GameStop was revived by the Reddit community of traders, who began buying the stock en masse, crowding out short sellers and driving GameStop’s stock to new all-time highs. The stock price has since declined, and the business still faces serious headwinds, but the company has focused on collectibles and digital assets as well as a Bitcoin treasury strategy.
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Now, GameStop has about $9.4 billion of cash and liquid investments on its balance sheet, as well as third-party financing that adds up to $20 billion. GameStop claims that should be good enough for the half off offer; The other half will come from GameStop common stock. Finally, GameStop has been quietly buying eBay shares, and already has a 5 percent stake in the company.
GameStop plans to improve eBay’s business, which has been performing better on its own recently, in conjunction with cost-cutting measures. GameStop will also leverage its remaining retail locations to “give eBay a national network for authentication, intake, fulfillment and live commerce.”
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