Goldman Sachs is launching a new alternative investments platform to meet surging demand from wealthy clients who want direct stakes in fast-growing private companies before they go public. The new group combines Goldman’s existing alternatives business with two newly created teams focused on direct investments in individual companies and a secondary marketplace for buying and selling those holdings.
Kristin Olson, Goldman’s global head of alternatives for wealth, said clients are increasingly focused on getting access to major growth-tech names like SpaceX and Stripe while they are still private. Companies are going public at trillion-dollar valuations, she noted, meaning investors who haven’t participated along the way are missing a big part of the growth cycle.
The move reflects two broader trends reshaping Wall Street. Goldman has been pushing deeper into wealth and asset management for years because it provides steadier revenue than investment banking and trading. At the same time, today’s most successful startups are staying private far longer than they once did, allowing early backers to capture most of the upside before everyday investors get a chance to participate.
Olson said Goldman has been arranging direct investments in later-stage private companies for roughly two decades, pointing to Facebook before its 2012 initial public offering and more recently SpaceX, Stripe and Canva. But demand has grown enough that executives decided to break out the business formally. Rather than chasing early-stage ventures, Goldman typically targets more mature companies with established products, meaningful revenue and clearer paths toward profitability — what Olson described as a sweet spot between risk and return.
The artificial intelligence boom has only intensified client appetite. Beyond leading AI model developers, Goldman is increasingly directing clients toward infrastructure underpinning the technology, including data centers and related projects. The announcement comes just days after Goldman reported record quarterly revenue fueled partly by AI-driven activity across its banking, trading and financing operations.