Available evidence three years after the October 22, 2022 episode does not match Chamath’s prediction that Snap would be "abandoned" by investors and become a thinly owned "refugee" in the public markets.

Key points:

• Institutional ownership remains large, not abandoned. Multiple datasets show roughly 50%± of Snap’s shares are still held by institutions, with hundreds of institutional holders:

  • MarketBeat reports institutional ownership of 47.5% as of late November 2025, with substantial inflows and outflows over the last 24 months, not a collapse of interest. (marketbeat.com)
  • Tickergate and other trackers similarly show around 51% institutional, ~24% insiders, ~25% retail. (tickergate.com)
  • Fintel lists ~827–829 institutional owners holding about 865–867 million shares (~59% of shares, ex‑13D/G), i.e., a very broad shareholder base. (fntl.au)
  • BusinessQuant notes institutions owned 51.8% of shares as of June 2025, down only modestly from 53.9% in March, with the institutional owner count down ~6% year‑over‑year—rebalancing, not wholesale flight. (businessquant.com)

• The stock is heavily traded, not “thinly owned” or illiquid.

  • Investing.com shows an average daily volume around 30M shares; YCharts shows a 30‑day average volume of ~129M shares in October 2025. (investing.com)
  • MarketWatch repeatedly reports single‑day volumes well above 100M–250M shares (e.g., 266M shares on Sept. 30, 2025), far exceeding what would be considered thin trading. (marketwatch.com)
  • Ainvest notes daily trading turnover around $280–290M, ranking Snap roughly 350th–380th by U.S. trading volume—again, very ordinary for a mid‑cap tech stock, not a stranded “refugee.” (ainvest.com)

• Share count has grown, not shrunk, and large holders remain.

  • Shares outstanding rose from about 1.61B in 2022 to 1.66B in 2024 and ~1.70B in 2025, meaning the absolute number of shares held by public investors has grown, not contracted. (macrotrends.net)
  • Major asset managers (FMR, Vanguard, Capital World, BlackRock, etc.) continue to hold tens or hundreds of millions of shares each. (mlq.ai)

• Coverage remains broad; the stock is out of favor but not orphaned.

  • Around 30–44 sell‑side analysts still cover Snap, with a consensus rating of Hold and explicit target prices—hardly the profile of a stock that institutions have “abandoned.” (pricetargets.com)
  • News and research from Barron’s, Investors Business Daily and others routinely discuss Snap’s earnings, ad‑market exposure, and AI or product catalysts, indicating ongoing institutional and media attention. (barrons.com)

• Governance concerns remain, but they did not cause mass exit.

  • Snap’s founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy still control >99% of voting power; Class A shares have no voting rights, exactly the governance structure Chamath objected to. (sec.gov)
  • However, despite this entrenched control, the data above show continuing large‑scale institutional ownership and active trading, contradicting the idea that investors would broadly conclude “there’s no point” and leave the stock stranded.

• Price performance is weak but that alone doesn’t fulfill the prediction.

  • By late 2025 the stock trades in the high single digits, well below both its 2021 peak and its 52‑week high (~$13–17), and has suffered several double‑digit post‑earnings drops. (investing.com)
  • That supports “out-of-favor” sentiment, but not the stronger claim that the shareholder base would shrink to the point of being a thinly owned “refugee.” Ownership and liquidity metrics clearly do not show that outcome.

Putting this together: governance remains founder‑controlled and the stock is volatile and unpopular at times, but institutions still own roughly half the company, trade it heavily, and dozens of analysts cover it. There is no evidence of the kind of sustained, near‑total investor abandonment and thin ownership Chamath predicted. Hence the prediction is best classified as wrong overall.