eBay CEO Marks 30 Year Anniversary With Bold Claims On Authentication & AI Capabilities
UPDATE 9-8-25 CEO Jamie Iannone is doubling down on his authentication claims, repeating the line that "to his knowledge" no counterfeits have ever passed through one of eBay's authentication centers in an interview with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi.
Sozzi related a story that he had purchased a Movado watch on eBay years ago only to find out it was fake and swore that he would never buy another expensive watch from the platform again, leading to him posing the question to Iannone, "how do you authenticate the stuff on the platform?"
Iannone responded:
First, I'm sorry you had that experience. Trust and safety has been incredibly important to me, so we started authenticating products on the platform so if you buy a watch, a handbag, a pair of sneakers, trading cards - it actually goes through one of our authentication centers before it ends up at the buyer.
This quarter we actually authenticated a million items and we hit our 15th million item authenticated to our centers and to my knowledge, we've never had a counterfeit product get through one of our authentication centers.
If only Brian had known to ask Jamie about that ~$23K Michael Jordan card.
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched the ecommerce marketplace, then known as AuctionWeb over Labor Day weekend in 1995 as a site "dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace" based on the premise that "people are basically good."
The company is celebrating their 30th anniversary today with in person pop up shops and eBay Live events for "The ‘95 Shop" and CEO Jamie Iannone ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite.
But it's Iannone's segment on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning that's really creating a buzz with bold statements about eBay's AI technology capabilities and trust-building authentication efforts as part of his "enthusiast buyer" "focus vertical" strategy.
First, the host mentioned she is a longtime eBay shopper, pointing out eBay's most recently reported metric of 134 Million active buyers is of course many more than they had 30 years ago.
But not only is it rather obvious that one would of course expect there to be more buyers today, framing it in that way also conveniently glosses over the fact that under Iannone's leadership, eBay has actually lost buyers, with Q2 2025 marking the 13th consecutive quarter where they had less Active Buyers than in Q1 2018.
Note: eBay changed the definition of GMV and Active Buyers at the end of 2021 and restated both figures going back to 2018 (chart reflects restated figures per eBay's amended reports.)
Iannone then went on to extol the virtues of eBay's AI technology, once again claiming that sellers can just take a picture and let eBay's AI do the rest.
You know, I think it's the use of technology to take all the friction out of the experience, especially now. It's exciting because we're using generative AI to really make it easy to list products on the platform.
Think about holding your camera up to an item, and we figure out, here's exactly what it is. We write the description for you. We put it on a beautiful background.
So let's say your son wants to sell one of those trading cards. Before, he would have had to type all the information in take a beautiful picture. All of that is handled seamlessly now with technology.
But if you talk to anyone who has tried to use eBay's "Magical AI Listing" tools, you'll find many say the experience is less than magical and doesn't live up to the hype - including that you still have to manually fill in a lot of product information to "help" the AI along.
Liz Morton
On Jamie's specific example of trading cards....well that isn't going so well either.
Liz Morton
As far as AI reducing friction, many sellers say it actually adds friction with eBay using AI to create product summaries and highlights that often get details wrong, raising concerns the way the company is using the technology is not transparent and risks causing an increase in bad buyer experiences, negative feedback and not as described claims and returns.
Liz Morton
But the wildest claim given in this ~6 minute interview has to be when Iannone says "to his knowledge" eBay has never passed a counterfeit item through any of their authentication centers!
Interestingly the subject came up with the host was asking him about competition from StockX, which just settled a lawsuit brought against them by Nike related in part to counterfeit sneakers sold through their platform despite their authentication guarantee.
The question posed to Iannone was:
When it comes to sneakers, I guess you're competing with the likes of a StockX where they are authenticating too. How do you do that? How do you make sure it's actually authentic property?
Jamie answered:
We have an amazing team of Authenticators. This quarter was our first quarter we authenticated a million items in a single quarter. And we do it now across watches, jewelry, handbags, trading cards, sneakers, etc.
We have eight authentication centers throughout the world. We just opened up our newest one in Japan, and to my knowledge, we've never had a counterfeit get through one of our authentication centers.
First, we could quibble about the "newest" authentication center.
The location in Japan was opened in 2023, making it much older than the one opened in Kentucky in April 2025 - but clearly Jamie doesn't want to talk about that because it might lead to uncomfortable questions about how eBay leveraged that new location to lay off over 200 workers at subsidiary TCGPlayer and finally break the first union in the company's 30 year history.
Liz Morton
But really? We're supposed to believe eBay has never had a counterfeit item get through one of their authentication centers?
Unfortunately for Jamie, there are many well-documented actual user experiences to the contrary.
For example, this buyer purchased a ~$23K Michael Jordan card that passed through eBay authentication but turned out to be fake - as eventually admitted to by both Beckett and eBay.
Just doing a search on Twitter/X will also find many other examples:
🚨🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥🚨🔥
— Bryce (@MJCollector23) July 9, 2025
NEED HELP HOBBY FAM! RT
Bought raw card, passed @eBay authentication, graded it with @PSAcard, they gave it a PSA 8; weeks later they decertified it!
Since it is past 90-day return window, @eBay and @PSAcard refuse to do anything. $5,000 card!!
Help @rhoge!!!
Another example of failures of the @eBay authenticity program.
— auburn35 (@35auburn) May 4, 2024
This account has several counterfeit @PaniniAmerica cards listed and even has feedback showing at least one was approved by @CGCCards and eBay.https://t.co/FwziJyBQib https://t.co/d1lkF4MbMm pic.twitter.com/WC5eK0P0pI
Sports memorabilia collectors are still reeling from July's revelations about a massive forgery and fraud scheme committed by Mister ManCave founder Brett Lemieux and while it's not clear how much of his inventory was sold through eBay or whether any of it passed through authentication, there is still an ongoing federal investigation that may reveal more details in the future.
Liz Morton
There's also the fact that the company is currently being sued by an Ohio man alleging eBay and PSA failed to catch purposely altered listing images and clear differences in condition on a card sold with Authenticity Guarantee.
Liz Morton
While that lawsuit doesn't claim the card is counterfeit, it does allege eBay authentication missed critical details that should have flagged the item as not as described - and if they missed that, it's not difficult to believe they may also occasionally miss details that should flag an item as counterfeit too.
The most charitable take on Iannone's remarks is that "to my knowledge" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and maybe he truly is just absolutely clueless as to what is going on with the eBay Authenticity Guarantee program - in which case, I'd have to seriously question whether he is qualified to continue leading the company.
Or it could simply be a slick way to use plausible deniability to avoid accountability - if so, it certainly wouldn't be the first time an eBay executive did that.
Liz Morton
It also wouldn't be the first time Iannone played fast and loose with the truth on a subject of great interest or importance to both eBay's customers and shareholders as he and other current execs continue to forward the lie that eBay Live livestream shopping was just launched in the UK in May 2025 when eBay's own press releases and archived web pages show it's actually been active in that market since April 2024.
Liz Morton
While that may seem like a small and perhaps unimportant detail, it begs the question - where else might eBay be being less than honest about their financial and operational performance?
And if they're willing to be dishonest about eBay Live in order to keep shareholders happy, who's to say that Iannone might not carefully hedge his comments around the success of the company's authentication programs too.
Have you ever received an item that passed eBay's Authenticity Guaranteed program for sneakers, streetwear, handbags, jewelry, watches, and trading cards but ended up being verified as counterfeit after you received it?
Let us know about your experience in the comments below or contact VAR!
