The deal will be in cash and equity, contingent on performance and service milestones, and will bring the Neos Bitcoin High Income ETF (BTCI), Boosted Bitcoin High Income ETF (XBCI) and Ethereum High Income ETF (NEHI) under Goldman Sachs Asset Management. 

CEO David Solomon called NEOS’s 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 deal as pairing NEOS’s “entrepreneurial spirit” with Goldman’s scale.

NEOS manages roughly $30 billion across 19 ETFs that use options strategies to generate monthly income. 

Combined with Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s existing $40 billion in income-oriented, options-based ETFs, the deal will push Goldman’s active ETF business to about $80 billion — making it the eighth-largest active ETF manager, according to Morningstar — inside a broader $130 billion ETF platform.

The move follows Goldman’s earlier acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, rounding out a three-way combination focused on derivative-income and buffer/outcome strategies.

The Bitcoin ETFs in question don’t hold the cryptocurrency directly, rather they use derivatives to generate income from crypto-linked exposure rather than owning the underlying coins, per NEOS’s disclosures. 

Therefore, the high headline yields come largely from selling options premium, not necessarily reflecting the price performance of Bitcoin itself. 

The acquisition effectively hands Goldman Sachs a ready-made foothold in crypto-income ETFs — a corner of the market it hadn’t built organically — right as institutional appetite for digital-asset-adjacent, income-generating products continues to grow alongside the broader derivative-income boom.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory approval.