Goldman Sachs drops $2.25 billion to hijack the Bitcoin yield market and leapfrog BlackRock by 19x
Goldman Sachs agreed to buy NEOS Investments for up to $2.25 billion in cash and equity, pending regulatory approval and other conditions, with closing expected in Q1 2027. The deal adds NEOS’ 19 options-based income ETFs and a roughly $30 billion platform, expanding Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s income-and-outcome ETF business and potentially lifting its global ETF assets to about $130 billion with NEOS and Innovator Capital Management. Goldman said the combination would make it the eighth-largest active ETF provider by assets. A key asset is the NEOS Bitcoin High Income ETF (BTCI), which had about $1.1 billion in net assets and uses Bitcoin-linked exposure plus call-writing to generate income. Goldman had already filed for its own Bitcoin premium income ETF, so acquiring BTCI would immediately give it a much larger presence in that niche. The derivative-income ETF market has grown rapidly to about $180 billion since 2021.
