Goldman Sachs to Acquire Bitcoin Income ETF Manager NEOS for Up to $2.25 Billion

Goldman Sachs said it will acquire NEOS Investments, the manager of a Bitcoin-linked income ETF, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at as much as $2.25 billion.

CoinDesk reported on August 12 that Goldman disclosed the transaction in a statement. The purchase price could rise to $2.25 billion if performance targets are met. The bank expects to complete the deal in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory approval.

NEOS’s flagship product is BTCI, a synthetic Bitcoin ETF with $1.1 billion in assets under management. Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior ETF analyst, wrote on X that BTCI surpassed $1 billion in assets in less than two years after its October 2024 launch. He described the fund as a structure that holds spot Bitcoin ETPs and sells call options against those positions to pay monthly distributions. Its annual yield is about 27%.

BTCI does not hold Bitcoin directly. Its structure also requires investors to give up part of the upside when Bitcoin prices rally sharply.

The acquisition will also give Goldman control of NEOS’s 19 funds and its options-based ETF platform with $30 billion in assets. Combined with Goldman’s existing $40 billion in options-based ETF assets and the assets tied to its acquisition of Innovator Capital Management announced in December, the bank’s total ETF assets under management will exceed $130 billion. That would place Goldman among the world’s eight-largest active ETF managers.

Balchunas wrote that the deal helps explain why Goldman filed for its own Bitcoin covered-call ETF several months ago but never launched it. In his view, the bank opted to buy an established product rather than build one itself. Goldman registered a similar product, the Goldman Sachs Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on April 14.

BlackRock, meanwhile, launched its own Bitcoin income ETF, BITA, on Nasdaq on June 16. BITA targets annual yields of 15% to 25% and applies covered calls to 25% to 35% of its IBIT holdings. Its annual fee is 0.65%, below BTCI’s 0.99%.

Morningstar says the derivatives income ETF market now has about $180 billion in industrywide assets under management and has grown at an average annual rate of more than 70% since 2021.