Bruce Bond and John Southard have found a new home for their 13-year-old Chicagoland boutique, thanks to a ten-figure deal with a Gotham giant.

This morning, David Solomon, chairman and CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. [profile], and Bond, co-founder and CEO of Innovator Capital Management [profile], revealed that New York City-based Goldman has agreed to pay about $2 billion to buy Wheaton, Illinois-based Innovator. Per Innovator's most recent form ADV, filed back in April, the ETF shop is currently principally owned by Bond (between 50 and 74 percent), Southard (between 25 and 49 percent), and Jeffrey Brown and Rebecca Brown (a combined indirect stake of between 10 and 24 percent).

Goldman's own Goldman Sachs Global Banking and Markets advised the bank on the deal, while Oppenheimer & Co, Inc. advised Innovator. On the legal side, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP counseled Goldman, while Vedder Price counseled Innovator. Bond tells MFWire that, thanks to the expected proxy process for winning over the shareholders of Innovators' ETFs, the deal is expected close in "late Q1 or early Q2" of 2026.

The $2-billion-price tag (which includes a mix of cash and stock, and includes an earnout) translates into seven percent of Innovator's $28 billion in AUS*. By comparison, Goldman Sachs Asset Management now has about $50 billion in ETF AUM (including about $33 billion specifically in active ETFs), a Goldman spokesperson tells MFWire. (GSAM overall now has about $3.5 trillion in AUS*, so ETFs are currently about 1.4 percent of GSAM's total assets.)

On the product side, Innovator specializes in defined outcome ETFs and currently offers 159 exchange-traded funds. GSAM, a Goldman spokesperson confirms, currently has 60 ETFs (including 29 active ETFs). That spokesperson confirms that the Innovator deal is GSAM's first ever ETF shop acquisition.

"We have been looking primarily to an organic growth strategy," the Goldman spokesperson says. "We saw this as a nice complement to what we already have."

Solomon calls active ETFs "dynamic, transformative, and ... one of the fastest-growing segments in today's public investment landscape."

"By acquiring Innovator, Goldman Sachs will expand access to modern, world-class investment products for investor portfolios," Solomon states. "Innovator's reputation for innovation and leadership in defined outcome solutions complements our mission to enhance the client experience with sophisticated strategies that seek to deliver targeted, defined outcomes for investors."

Innovator currently has a team of more than 60 employees, including Bond, Southard (co-founder and president), Graham Day (executive vice president and chief investment officer), and Trevor Terrell (senior vice president and head of distribution). Bond confirms that his team is staying on and points to Bryon Lake (chief transformation officer at GSAM and a former employee at PowerShares, a prior Bond ETF venture) as the liaison between GSAM and Innovator.

"Everybody's staying intact," Bond says. "Goldman wants to really maximize the value and the talent of the team that we have here. We're really a market leader in defined outcome."

"We are going to continue to lead it here for now," Bond adds. "We're going to be working closely with the leadership of the asset management group at Goldman Sachs."

Bond confirms that the Innovator and Goldman teams have been in talks for "quite a while, probably six months."

"One of the things that we really like about Goldman is that they're known and perceived and their brand is they're v savvy and sophisticated investors," Bond says. "We think that aligns perfectly with Innovator, what we do."

Watch for the Innovator name to remain after the deal closes next year.

"We are going to continue to use the Innovator brand," Bond says, adding that Innovator's brand will also blend in Goldman's.

Looking ahead, the GSAM may do more acquisitions in the ETF space, but don't count on it any time soon. (They're also doing other types of deals, such as the upcoming acquisition of venture capital platform Industry Ventures, which was unveiled back in October.)

"The bar is still pretty high for looking at acquisitions," a Goldman spokesperson says. "Where we think it's a high-growth category, where we see it's a fit with the rest of our business, we're willing to make acquisitions."

Innovator Management launched in 2014, but Southard and Bond bought the ETF boutique (then with about $300 million in AUM) from an accounting firm in 2017. The duo rebranded Innovator Management as Innovator Capital Management and built out an entirely new team. (News of the Goldman-Innovator sale also comes 19 years after the sale of Bond and Southard's prior ETF shop, PowerShares, to another big asset manager.)

*As of September 30, 2025. 

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