Goldman Sachs in the Vietnamese market now has a maximum of 2.25 billion USD to buy NEOS, taking over immediately a BTCI fund worth about 1 billion USD.

Goldman Sachs has just chosen a buyback route to enter the market for funds that generate income from tokenized assets, after reaching an agreement worth up to 2.25 billion USD to acquire NEOS Investments, the company specializing in exchange-traded fund (ETF) products behind one of the Bitcoin products that uses a covered call strategy with one of the largest option-selling margins in the market today.

The Wall Street firm said the transaction will be paid in cash and stock, with the final value depending on the achievement of certain performance and service targets, and will bring NEOS’s roughly $30 billion options-based income ETF lineup into Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

Although the official announcement focused mainly on NEOS’s broader derivative-income product lineup, the transaction in practice gives Goldman immediate significant positioning in the crypto asset ETF market, which the bank had previously been building step by step on its own.

This position comes mainly from BTCI, NEOS’s flagship Bitcoin fund, which uses a covered call strategy and has attracted about $1 billion in assets since launch by generating monthly income through selling options based on Bitcoin exposure, in exchange for limiting part of the upside potential for investors. NEOS also runs a similar product for Ethereum.

A faster path than building a product from scratch

Before this deal, Goldman had only entered the crypto asset income ETF segment at the filing stage. In April, the bank filed for its own Bitcoin Premium ETF, designed to generate income by writing options linked to spot Bitcoin ETFs, a move that led some analysts to speculate Goldman was trying to get ahead of a similar filing by BlackRock.

The acquisition of the entire NEOS business is seen as a significantly faster path, as Goldman would immediately gain an established market-positioned asset manager and existing crypto asset funds, rather than waiting for a self-built product to gain traction from scratch.

The deal comes as derivative income ETFs have become one of the market’s fastest-growing segments, with total assets reaching about $180 billion and a compound annual growth rate exceeding 70% since 2021, according to Morningstar data, with crypto assets increasingly becoming a prominent part as issuers accelerate the inclusion of Bitcoin and Ethereum in yield-generating investment structures.

Chairman and CEO David Solomon described the deal primarily in terms of NEOS’s income-generation strategy and broader outcome-based investing strategy. NEOS co-founders Garrett Paolella and Troy Cates will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as partners after the transaction closes.