Goldman Sachs builds a private markets platform for its wealthy clients

Goldman Sachs has pulled its private-market activities into a single unit built for wealthy clients and family offices who want to own pieces of fast-growing private companies directly. CNBC reported on 21 July 2026, citing an internal memo, that the bank has created an “alternative investments platform” combining its existing alternatives business with two new teams: one focused on direct stakes in individual private companies rather than pooled private equity funds, and one that helps clients buy and sell those holdings.

What is changing

Kristin Olson, Goldman’s global head of alternatives for wealth, framed the move around access to a small set of names before they list. “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,” she told CNBC. Her reasoning is that the value is now created earlier: “Companies are going public at a trillion dollars. If you haven’t participated along the way, you’re clearly missing a big part of the growth cycle.”

Two forces sit behind the decision. Goldman has spent years pushing into wealth and asset management, seen as steadier than trading and investment banking. And the most successful start-ups now stay private far longer, so early backers capture most of the gains before public investors get a look. Olson said the firm has arranged direct late-stage investments for wealthy clients for roughly two decades, pointing to Facebook before its 2012 listing and later SpaceX, Stripe and Canva. Rising demand is what convinced executives to break the activity out on its own.

The platform leans towards later-stage companies with established products, real revenue and a clearer path to profit, rather than early start-ups. The AI build-out has sharpened appetite further, with Goldman steering clients towards the infrastructure behind AI, including data centres. The announcement landed days after the bank reported record quarterly revenue.

The part family offices should notice

The second team matters as much as the first. Through a new secondary advisory group, Goldman plans to run a marketplace where clients buy and sell private holdings, and it will advise clients looking to exit investments held elsewhere. The lack of an exit has always been the awkward part of holding private stakes, so a bank offering to make a market in them changes the calculation.

For family offices, this cuts two ways. Many have spent the past decade building their own direct-deal and co-investment capability precisely because it was treated as an edge that banks could not match. A bulge-bracket firm now packaging both access and liquidity is useful as deal flow and as a route to sell down, but it also plants a competitor on ground family offices considered their own. The families most likely to engage are those without the in-house team to source and, more importantly, to eventually exit these positions on their own.

Sources: CNBC.