Goldman Sachs Pays Up to $2.25B for NEOS, Inheriting $1.1B Bitcoin ETF Yielding 27%

Goldman Sachs agreed to acquire NEOS Investments in a cash-and-equity deal valued at up to $2.25 billion, instantly handing the bank a $30 billion options-income ETF platform that includes a $1.1 billion Bitcoin-linked fund yielding roughly 27%. The agreement, announced Wednesday, is contingent on performance and service milestones and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027 pending regulatory approval.

What Goldman Is Buying

NEOS manages about $30 billion across 19 options-based income ETFs. The crypto-linked lineup includes the Bitcoin High Income ETF (BTCI), the Boosted Bitcoin High Income ETF (XBCI) and the Ethereum High Income ETF (NEHI).

BTCI is the headline asset. Launched in October 2024, it crossed $1 billion in assets in under two years and now sits at roughly $1.1 billion. It doesn’t hold bitcoin directly; instead it holds spot Bitcoin ETPs and sells call options against those positions to generate monthly distributions, charging a 0.99% expense ratio. That structure has produced a yield near 27% over the past year, but the fund’s price has fallen about 43% over the same period — the trade-off of a covered-call strategy that caps upside during rallies in exchange for steady income.

Scaling Goldman’s ETF Business to $130 Billion

Adding NEOS’ $30 billion to Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s existing $40 billion in income-oriented, options-based ETFs pushes Goldman’s active ETF business to roughly $80 billion, making it the eighth-largest active ETF manager, according to Morningstar. Combined with Goldman’s earlier acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, the bank’s total ETF platform will rise to about $130 billion.

CEO David Solomon called NEOS’ approach “highly complementary” to Goldman’s existing buffer, managed-outcome and income capabilities. NEOS co-founders Garrett Paolella and Troy Cates, who will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as partners, framed the tie-up as pairing NEOS’ “entrepreneurial spirit” with Goldman’s scale.

Buy, Don’t Build

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the acquisition as a “semi-shock,” pointing to NEOS’ rapid growth since its 2022 founding and Goldman’s back-to-back purchases of NEOS and Innovator. He also connected the deal to Goldman’s own filing on April 14, 2026, for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF that would have used a similar covered-call structure — a product the bank never launched. Balchunas quipped he now understood why: “Nowww I get why GS never launched the BTC covered call pro[duct].”

The purchase also lands as Goldman had been trimming its own disclosed crypto ETF book. Regulatory filings showed the bank exited XRP- and Solana-linked ETF positions in the first quarter while cutting its Bitcoin and Ether ETF holdings, though it still reported more than $700 million in Bitcoin ETF exposure at quarter’s end.

Why It Matters for BTCI Holders

For investors already holding BTCI, XBCI or NEHI, the fund’s underlying strategy — spot ETP exposure paired with covered calls — is not expected to change; only the manager behind it does, once the deal closes in early 2027 pending regulatory sign-off. The bigger signal is competitive: Goldman is buying, rather than building, its way into a derivative-income ETF niche where rivals like BlackRock already compete, and where yields as high as 27% come with the trade-off of missing out on bitcoin’s upside during sharp rallies.

Read more: Fidelity’s $898M Ether ETF to Stake 100% of Holdings, Keep 85% of Rewards

Sources

• bitcoinmagazine.com
• cointelegraph.com
• decrypt.co
• coindesk.com