The exchange-traded fund ecosystem keeps growing: There are now 268 ETF issuers in the United States—roughly double the number of issuers there were three years ago, according to data from Bloomberg.
The ETF industry saw 45 issuers debut last year and is on pace for 50 new ones in 2025, according to Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas, who shared the data in a post on X.
“It's where the fish are biting,” Balchunas said.
FactSet data analyzed by etf.com show 289 unique issuers as of August 2025, up from 252 in 2024, which puts the projected number of new issuers closer to 60 by year's end.
The explosion of new ETF issuers represents the fact that there is investor appetite for ETFs, and firms are eager to meet that demand, Zach Evens, analyst of passive strategies at Morningstar, told etf.com. He added that a lot of the ETF launches from new issuers have been in non-traditional or niche strategies.
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“These types of strategies attempt to capture a specific market, or trade, and deliver select clients the specific exposures they desire,” Evens said, adding that many of the issuers use options to achieve those exposures.
Examples include covered-call and derivative-income ETFs, including single-stock funds: Derivative-income strategies saw more than $29 billion in net flows in the first six months of the year, and it was the top category for all active ETF flows, according to data from Morningstar. Other examples are leveraged or inverse ETFs—also sometimes with single-stock funds—crypto-related ETFs and defined outcome or buffer ETFs.
Many of these ETFs are relatively expensive compared to index ETFs, which lowers the bar for profitability, Evens added.
Another trend behind the surge of new ETF issuers is that it’s now relatively easy for firms to launch new ETFs with the rise in white label providers like Tidal Financial and ETF Architect, which handle much of the administration and operations associated with launching and running an ETF, Evens said.
That means that, while there’s more demand, there’s also more ability for firms to meet that demand.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to add issuer data from FactSet.
