Goldman Sachs has created a new platform aimed at giving wealthy clients and family offices direct stakes in fast-growing private companies, as demand surges from investors eager to get in before the next SpaceX or Stripe ever reaches a public exchange.
The new group, called the alternative investments platform, consolidates Goldman's existing alternatives business with two newly established teams, according to an internal memo. One team focuses on direct investments in individual private companies rather than broader private equity funds; the other helps clients buy and sell those stakes on a secondary basis.
"There has been a lot of focus on the big growth tech names and getting clients access to those before they debut in the public markets," Kristin Olson, Goldman Sachs' global head of alternatives for wealth, said in an interview.
The move reflects two converging forces reshaping the firm's strategy. Goldman has spent years pushing deeper into wealth and asset management, viewing it as a source of more stable revenues than investment banking and trading. At the same time, the most successful startups are remaining private far longer than they once did, allowing early investors to capture the bulk of gains before ordinary public-market participants can participate.
"Companies are going public at a trillion dollars," Olson said. "If you haven't participated along the way, you're clearly missing a big part of the growth cycle."
Goldman has been arranging direct investments in later-stage private companies for wealthy clients for roughly two decades, Olson said, citing Facebook ahead of its 2012 IPO and, more recently, SpaceX, Stripe, and Canva. But expanded demand for the asset class pushed executives to formalize the business as a standalone unit.
Rather than targeting early-stage startups, the firm generally focuses on later-stage companies that have established products, meaningful revenue, and clearer paths toward profitability — what Olson described as a "sweet spot" between risk and return.
The AI investment boom has intensified that demand. Beyond leading model developers, Goldman is increasingly steering clients toward infrastructure supporting AI, including data centers and related projects, Olson said.
The announcement comes days after Goldman reported record quarterly revenue, with executives highlighting AI-driven activity across investment banking, trading, and financing businesses. The results reinforced the view that Goldman is positioned to benefit from multiple facets of the AI investment cycle.
The new platform also formalizes Goldman's secondary advisory business, through which the firm plans to expand a marketplace allowing clients to buy and sell private holdings. The secondary group will also advise clients looking to exit investments held outside Goldman altogether.
"We said, let's break that out and let's make it very clearly defined as something that we're leaning into," Olson said.
The launch signals a broader shift on Wall Street, where major financial institutions are racing to capture a segment of the market that was once the exclusive domain of venture capital and large institutional investors. As the pipeline of high-profile IPOs continues to compress relative to the scale of private-market gains, access to pre-IPO stakes is becoming an increasingly central offering for firms competing for high-net-worth clients.
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