Goldman Sachs' $2.25B NEOS Buy Lands Bitcoin Income ETF
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- Goldman Sachs agreed to acquire NEOS Investments in a deal worth up to $2.25 billion (cash-and-equity, contingent on performance and service targets), folding roughly $30 billion in options-based income ETFs into Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
- The purchase gives Goldman immediate scale in crypto income via NEOS's BTCI fund, a Bitcoin covered-call ETF with around $1 billion in assets, plus a comparable Ethereum covered-call product.
- Goldman filed in April for its own Bitcoin Premium ETF designed to write options tied to spot Bitcoin ETFs — buying NEOS is a far faster route than waiting for a newly launched product to attract AUM, and comes after analysts speculated Goldman was trying to leapfrog a similar BlackRock filing.
- The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory approval.
- Derivative-income ETFs have grown to roughly $180 billion in assets with a compound annual growth rate topping 70% since 2021, per Morningstar, with crypto becoming an increasingly prominent slice.
- NEOS co-founders Garrett Paolella and Troy Cates will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as partners once the transaction closes.
Why it matters: Goldman leapfrogged its own April Bitcoin Premium ETF filing and a comparable BlackRock product by purchasing an established $1 billion Bitcoin covered-call fund outright, gaining instant scale in a derivative-income category growing at 70%+ annually. The Q1 2027 closing timeline shows incumbents can acquire crypto yield-product credibility faster than regulators can clear first-time filings.
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