Goldman Sachs Asset Management Makes $42.5M Investment in GeoWealth Platform

Goldman Sachs Asset Management landed a board seat at Chicago-based GeoWealth by writing a $42.5 million check to expand the turnkey asset management platform's 2025 Series C financing round, with Bryon Lake, GSAM's partner and global co-head of third-party wealth, set to join GeoWealth's board of directors following the close.

The investment is structured as a minority stake. The Globe Resources Group, the family office that has owned a majority of GeoWealth, retains that position. Apollo, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, the last of which is sub-advised by Composition Capital, remain on the cap table as minority investors alongside Goldman.

Most of the $42.5 million is earmarked for shareholder liquidity. The remainder will fund development of GeoWealth's unified managed account technology, along with tax and artificial intelligence planning capabilities. GeoWealth CEO Colin Falls said Goldman now has direct influence over where that development goes. "With its investment, Goldman Sachs now has a seat at the table in molding those developments and the directions and planning GeoWealth's path forward," Falls said.

The deal formalized and deepened a working relationship that began in October 2024, when GSAM and GeoWealth first announced a partnership to let registered investment advisors build open-architecture custom models delivered inside single UMA accounts. Those models can draw from SMAs, ETFs, direct indexing, mutual funds and alternatives, and can be personalized by the RIA for each client's tax situation and investment objectives.

"We've deepened our relationship with Goldman, which goes back two years now," Falls said.

Lake framed the investment as a convergence of complementary infrastructure each firm had already built separately. "It's the combination of the technology and rails we've both built that is what makes this very special," he said. He added that GeoWealth's managed-account depth, combined with Goldman's scale in alternatives and direct indexing work, created strategic logic that was difficult to ignore.

On why Goldman placed the bet, Lake pointed to the growing complexity facing RIAs serving high-net-worth clients. "Increasingly, advisors, RIAs in particular, are living in a complex world, and convergence of public and private investments, and the tax ramifications they are working with are extensive for high-net-worth clients and GeoWealth is developing technology in a deliberate, cohesive fashion to serve them," he said.

Falls was measured on the AI question when asked about specifics. He said the firm had already built substantial automation into its platform and that the next question was about integration at the agentic level. "Everyone is generally focused on improving internal efficiencies, but we've already built a lot of that automation into our platform along the way and eventually it comes down to how do we integrate all that from an agentic point of view," Falls said.

Lake joined Goldman Sachs in July 2024 from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, where he had been global head of ETF Solutions. He previously held leadership roles at PowerShares and Invesco. GSAM oversees approximately $3.1 trillion in assets under supervision as of September 30, 2024, and holds the top-ranked position in the U.S. among OCIO managers, insurance asset managers and SMA providers.