Goldman Sachs leaps into bitcoin income ETFs with $2.25 billion NEOS buyout

Goldman Sachs is acquiring NEOS Investments, the firm behind BTCI, a $1.1 billion bitcoin synthetic exchange-traded fund (ETF) that yields roughly 27%, according to a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg.

The acquisition deal in cash and equity puts NEOS at a valuation of up to $2.25 billion, is subject to performance targets and is expected to close during the first quarter of 2027 pending regulatory approval, Goldman Sachs said Wednesday in a statement detailing the agreement.

BTCI launched in October 2024 and has crossed $1 billion in assets in under two years, Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said in an X post. He also said it holds spot bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) and sells call options against those positions to generate monthly distributions. It does not directly hold bitcoin, and investors receive the yield from the product but forfeit some of the upside when bitcoin rallies, he said..

That trade-off is exactly what Goldman filed to build itself four months ago, Balchunas added.

On April 14, Goldman registered the Goldman Sachs Bitcoin Premium Income ETF with the SEC, proposing a structurally similar covered-call product. Balchunas was blunt about what Wednesday’s deal means for that filing.

“Nowww I get why GS never launched the BTC covered call product they filed months ago,” Balchunas wrote. “Better to leapfrog BlackRock’s $BITA vs me too?”

One senior ETF analyst, who asked not to be named, said the deal reflects Goldman’s push to build out its ETF business broadly, noting that BTCI is one of almost 20 funds in the NEOS lineup. “If anything, it shows that bitcoin is just part of the financial world, alongside stocks, bonds, etc.” As of June 30, 2026, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Innovator from Goldman Sachs Asset Management and NEOS manage more than $130 billion in ETF assets under supervision (AUS), according to the Wall Street bank’s statement.

BlackRock released its own bitcoin income ETF, BITA, on Nasdaq on June 16, about two months ahead of Goldmine’s filing. BITA targets a 15-25% annual yield and sells covered calls on 25-35% of its IBIT holdings. Its expense ratio is 0.65%.

BTCI charges 0.99% and is down 42.55% over the past year, with shares falling from a 52-week high of $65.87 to around $28.40, according to Bloomberg terminal data shared by Balchunas on X. According to the fund’s SEC prospectus, BTCI’s distributions may in part represent a return of capital rather than net investment income, a distinction income investors should weigh.

Goldman’s NEOS acquisition doesn’t just hand it BTCI. It also grants it access to a $30 billion options-based ETF platform across 19 funds, one of the fastest-growing in the industry, the Wall Street giant’s statement said. Combined with Goldman’s existing $40 billion in options-based ETF assets and the Innovator Capital Management acquisition it announced in December, Goldman will control more than $130 billion in total ETF assets, which is enough to rank it eighth among active ETF managers globally, it said.

NEOS co-founders Troy Cates and Garrett Paolella will join Goldman as partners after closing.

The derivative income ETF category has grown to roughly $180 billion in assets industry-wide, compounding at more than 70% annually since 2021, according to Morningstar. Goldman is buying into that growth rather than trying to organically replicate it.