GameStop, the video game retailer that became the poster child for meme stock mania, is preparing an acquisition offer for eBay. Let that sentence breathe for a moment.

According to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is planning to submit a bid for the online marketplace as soon as this month. The details of the potential offer — price, structure, financing — “couldn’t be learned.”

Here is what public data permits us to learn: GameStop carries a market capitalization of roughly $11.2 billion. eBay is valued at about $46 billion. GameStop’s cash pile sits at approximately $8.83 billion, as of October. The math is, to put it charitably, ambitious.

Cohen has been explicit about his goals. In an interview with the Journal, he said he aims to turn GameStop into a $100-billion-plus company through a major acquisition in the consumer or retail space. “It’s ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish,” Cohen told the paper.

The incentive structure behind that ambition is worth examining. GameStop’s board voted to award Cohen more than $35 billion in stock options — if he can push the company’s market cap to $100 billion and hit $10 billion in cumulative EBITDA. The carrot is enormous. The distance to it is roughly 9x the company’s current valuation.

If eBay’s board rebuffs the approach, Cohen may take his offer directly to shareholders, the Journal reported.

Skeptics are not hard to find. Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told Fortune he “might be able to give you a higher than 0.001% probability” that GameStop reaches $100 billion — before adding he’d take the underside of that bet. “He goes into a business where the physical game model is threatened by the digital download model and he’s just helpless,” Pachter said. “There’s nothing he can do to make that better.”

GameStop’s recent strategic pivots have not inspired confidence. A $500 million Bitcoin purchase last May gave the stock a brief bump before it tumbled 10% the following day. A June pivot to trading card sales sent shares down 20%.

EBay shares rose 7.6% to $112 in after-hours trading following the Journal’s report. GameStop ticked up 3.2% to $27.37. The market, it seems, is willing to be entertained.

Sources