Who is Ryan Cohen? The Chewy founder running GameStop has bought $118.6 million of its stock in 2026

Who is Ryan Cohen?

Ryan Cohen is a Canadian-born entrepreneur and investor. The facts on public record:

• Background: born in Montreal in 1986. He skipped college and was running small online businesses as a teenager.
• Chewy: founded it in 2011, sold it to PetSmart in April 2017 for about $3.35 billion, and stepped down as CEO in 2018.
• Investing: runs his own money through RC Ventures LLC. After the Chewy sale he put most of the proceeds into Apple and Wells Fargo, and he later built stakes in Alibaba and Bed Bath & Beyond.
• GameStop: joined the board in January 2021, became chairman in June 2021 and CEO in September 2023, and holds about 42.5 million shares.
• Pay: GameStop said when it named him CEO that he would receive no compensation for the role.

Every share count and price below comes from his Form 4 filings unless a news report is named. Quantral does not grade Ryan Cohen or any insider. We show his filed buys, which anyone can check on the SEC's site.

Ryan Cohen: from Chewy to GameStop

Dates come from company filings and news reports. GameStop prices are daily closes, adjusted for the 2022 four-for-one split.

The bitcoin buy was paid for with part of a $1.5 billion zero-interest convertible note sale in April 2025. Cohen told the Bitcoin 2025 conference that GameStop held 4,710 bitcoin as a hedge, and later reports said the company had not added to it.

Ryan Cohen's GameStop buys on file

Cohen files each open-market purchase on a Form 4 within two business days, and Quantral shows those filings as insider buys. The table lists every one since April 2025, with the average price he paid and what GameStop did after each buy, first to its October 15 high close and then to the latest close on October 26.

Added up, the 2026 buys come to 5,144,810 shares for $118.6 million, an average of $23.04 a share. Counting April 2025, it is 5,644,810 shares for $129.3 million. At the October 26 close the 2026 shares were worth about $123.0 million, 3.7% above what he paid.

His buys came in two waves:

• January. He bought at about $21 and then watched the stock fall to $17.87 by August 28. At that low, both January buys and the April 2025 one were 15% to 17% under water. They are back above his price now.
• September and October. He started buying again eight trading days after the low and kept going as the stock rose, each time at a higher price than the last. By October 15, GameStop had closed 57% above its August low. Then the filings stopped, and by October 26 the stock had given back 14.7%, which leaves the October 2 and October 13 buys below what he paid.

He was not the only insider buying. Four GameStop directors, Lawrence Cheng, James Grube, Alain Attal and Nat Turner, filed open-market buys between September 8 and October 1 worth about $2.0 million combined. Their buys are small next to his, but several insiders buying in the same few weeks is the pattern what is insider buying calls a cluster.

On October 13, the day of his last buy so far, Cohen went on the Pomp Podcast and, as 24/7 Wall St. reported, called investing in GameStop a screw-up and told listeners to "bet against us." Next to a $22.8 million purchase the same day, 24/7 Wall St. read it as a joke.

Ryan Cohen, GameStop and the eBay bid

In early May 2026, GameStop offered $125 a share for eBay, half in cash and half in GameStop stock, about $56 billion in all for a company roughly four times its size. Cohen said he could take costs out and speed up revenue growth, and argued eBay's managers owned too little of the stock. He defended it on CNBC on May 4, and GameStop fell 10% that day. On May 12, eBay's board called the offer "neither credible nor attractive."

He did not walk away:

• June 23: the performance award the board had approved in January, which Reuters valued at about $35 billion if every target was hit, was dropped at his request so the company could focus on the eBay proposal.
• July: a filing showed GameStop owned about 43.4 million eBay shares, roughly 9.8% of the company. By August 1 that stake was worth about $4.9 billion, next to about $5.1 billion of cash and securities.
• August 10: Bloomberg reported that Cohen was weighing a partnership or joint venture with eBay instead of a takeover, one that could use GameStop's roughly 1,600 US stores for trading cards and collectibles. Neither company commented.

We covered how the accounts we track read the bid in May in who is Roaring Kitty: the mentions that took a side ran 20 bearish to 10 bullish that month, and some of our best graded accounts stayed off the bull side. GameStop closed May 20% below its May 1 close.

For a long-term holder, the part of the bid to watch is the share count. A deal paid half in stock means new GameStop shares, and 24/7 Wall St. reported that an August debt-for-stock swap had already added about 55.5 million shares, roughly 12% of the count at the time. Cohen's buys add to his own stake, and any stock-funded deal would shrink everyone's slice, his included.

Ryan Cohen net worth: what's on file

There is no verified Ryan Cohen net worth. Forbes' real-time estimate was $5.0 billion on October 27, 2026. It is an estimate built from public holdings, and Forbes has published other figures for him over the years.

What you can check yourself:

The GameStop line is our arithmetic on his filing: 42.5 million shares at $23.90. At the October 15 close of $28.02 the same shares were worth about $1.19 billion, so this one line moved by about $170 million in seven trading days. The deal value of Chewy is not what he took home, since he shared ownership with investors, and the Apple, Wells Fargo and Alibaba stakes are reports from 2023 and 2024, not current filings. A holding value is not a net worth: it leaves out taxes, debts, cash and everything that is not on a public form.

Reports that include his GameStop warrants put his stake at about 46.2 million shares, or about 9.1% of the company. Those warrants let him buy at $32 and expire on October 30, 2026; with the stock at $23.90 they are below their exercise price.

Next to the Forbes estimate, his $118.6 million of 2026 buys comes to about 2%. That is the size test insider buying turns on: what share of the buyer's world went in.

Ryan Cohen and Bed Bath & Beyond

His other famous trade made him money, and the company filed for bankruptcy the next year. RC Ventures disclosed a near 10% stake in March 2022, then sold everything on August 16 and 17, 2022. Bed Bath & Beyond fell as much as 27% in late trading when the sale came out.

Two lawsuits followed. A New York suit seeking his short-swing profits was dismissed in June 2024, because the bankruptcy had cancelled the shares. A separate securities class action in Washington, D.C. largely survived his motion to dismiss in July 2023, and we found no final ruling in it.

What the accounts we track said as the buys stacked up

Before the autumn buys, the accounts we track leaned bearish on GameStop: in August the mentions that took a side ran 11 bearish to 9 bullish. From September 1 to October 26, GME drew 91 mentions from 63 accounts we track, and the ones that took a side ran 55 bullish to 15 bearish.

Most of that came in two weeks. From October 5 to 18, the busiest stretch, GameStop drew 70 mentions from 58 accounts, 60 of them on Reddit, with 41 bullish and 11 bearish. Nine of those posts named Cohen or the insider buying, and all nine leaned bullish. After October 19, with no new filing, the accounts we track went quiet: 4 mentions in a week.

Who posted, and what they said:

Account	When	What they posted
@Mr_Derivatives	Sep 10 to Oct 13	Posted Cohen's buys one by one, "Tail the Whale," and on October 13: "Almost $120M in purchases ytd"
@mkfilko	Oct 1	A fundamentals case: a $381 million net loss in 2021 turned into $418 million of net income, by his figures
@mkfilko	Oct 12	Called GameStop "a good hedge in a volatile market" and pointed to Pokémon card demand
u/Doral1729	Oct 5	On r/wallstreetbets, "I am in": following what he called record insider buying, while warning the stock is volatile
u/analbumcover	Oct 9	Bearish on r/wallstreetbets: not holding it long term and expecting it to drop "once the buying stops"
@cantonmeow	Oct 13	A chart read: a higher high after tagging his level near $18

mkfilko ranks in our top 20 by track record, and he built his case on the business, with the buys as background. Mr_Derivatives relayed each filing as it landed, and cantonmeow's $18 level held in August; neither ranks near the top of ours. A single chart level is one call, and a track record takes many graded calls.

The buying and the bullish posts peaked together. GameStop closed at its high two days after Cohen's last buy, and with no new filing since, it closed October 26 at $23.90, 14.7% below that high.

How to read a CEO's buys as a long-term holder

You can check a CEO's own buys: the person running GameStop put $118.6 million of his own money in at prices anyone could see. The filings tell you nothing about timing. His January buys sat under water for months, and his last two autumn buys are below his price today.

As a long-term holder, measure each buy against the buyer's wealth, look for other insiders buying, and watch the share count. For GameStop that gives you about 2% of an estimated fortune, four directors with small buys, and a company that has issued stock before and may again for eBay.

CEO buying stock explains how insider buys sit in Quantral next to Congress trades and the crowd, and what a meme stock is covers why a name like GameStop can move on attention long after a short squeeze. In the Quantral app, Cohen's next filing shows up as an insider buy, and every GameStop call from the accounts we track is graded as it resolves, so you can see whose read held up when the buying stopped.

Ryan Cohen FAQ

Who is Ryan Cohen?

Ryan Cohen is the founder of Chewy and the president, CEO and chairman of GameStop. Born in Montreal in 1986, he sold Chewy to PetSmart in 2017 for about $3.35 billion, joined GameStop's board in January 2021, became chairman that June and CEO in September 2023.

What is Ryan Cohen's net worth?

There is no verified figure. Forbes estimated $5.0 billion on October 27, 2026. The part you can check is his GameStop stake: 42,492,652 shares held directly after his October 13, 2026 filing, worth about $1.02 billion at the October 26 close of $23.90. That is a holding value on one day, not a net worth.

How many GameStop shares does Ryan Cohen own?

His October 13, 2026 Form 4 shows 42,492,652 shares held directly. Reports that count his GameStop warrants put him at about 46.2 million shares, about 9.1% of the company. The warrants have a $32 exercise price and expire on October 30, 2026.

Is Ryan Cohen buying GameStop stock?

Yes. He bought on the open market on seven trading days in 2026, 5,144,810 shares for $118.6 million, the latest on October 13 for $22.8 million at an average of $26.98. As of October 26 no newer buy had been filed.

Why did Ryan Cohen bid for eBay?

Cohen said he could cut eBay's costs and speed up its revenue growth, and argued its managers owned too little of the stock. GameStop offered about $56 billion, half cash and half stock, in May 2026. eBay rejected it on May 12. GameStop then built a stake of about 9.8% of eBay, and in August Bloomberg reported Cohen was weighing a partnership instead.

Does Ryan Cohen get paid by GameStop?

GameStop said when it named him CEO in September 2023 that he would receive no compensation. In January 2026 the board approved a performance award that Reuters valued at about $35 billion if every target was met; it was withdrawn at his request in June 2026.

Did Ryan Cohen make money on Bed Bath & Beyond?

Yes. Fortune reported that RC Ventures paid $121.2 million for the stake in early 2022 and sold it in August 2022 for $189.3 million, a profit of about $68 million.

Does Quantral track Ryan Cohen?

Quantral shows his open-market GameStop buys from his Form 4 filings, as it does for any insider. It does not grade him or any insider, since a handful of buys in a career is not a track record.

Ryan Cohen is not an account Quantral grades. His purchases, prices and share counts come from his public Form 4 filings with the SEC; other facts come from company filings and news reports as cited, and net worth estimates are third-party figures that have not been verified. GameStop prices are daily closes, adjusted for the 2022 stock split. Mentions, quoted posts and rankings come from the accounts Quantral tracks, as of October 26, 2026, with mention days in New York time. Quantral surfaces signals and context from public sources to support your own research. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or follow anyone. Past performance is not indicative of future results.