ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
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Chamath @ 00:23:33Wrong
marketseconomy
Over the next few years (roughly 2023–2025), at least half of the ~200 public software companies referenced in the chart (especially the unprofitable ones) will face severe difficulty raising capital and will likely need to either raise money on very punitive terms or go private in private‑equity transactions, resulting in on the order of 100 such companies leaving the public markets via PE-led take‑privates or similar structures.
I think if you look at the number of them that are unprofitable, at least half of them will have difficulty and about. So I think about two thirds of these companies really have no line of sight to profitability in the next 2 to 3 years. And again, if you if you layer in this cost of capital argument, all of those companies, David, will have to raise money at very egregious terms in order to keep themselves going as a public business, in which case their alternative is to go private in a PE transaction. So it's probably at least half these businesses. I mean, it's a lot.View on YouTube
Explanation

Evidence about deal volumes and market structure indicates that Chamath’s prediction did not come close to playing out at the scale he described.

Chamath’s premise was based on a chart of roughly 200 public software companies; he argued that about two‑thirds of the unprofitable names had “no line of sight” to profitability in 2–3 years and that around 100 of those public software firms might end up as PE deals (take‑privates) as a result.(moneymorning.com) The user’s normalized prediction matches this: on the order of 100 of those ~200 names leaving public markets via PE‑led take‑privates or similarly punitive capital raises over the 2023–2025 window.

What actually happened:

  • Cooley’s 2024 Tech M&A review reports only 19 take‑privates of US‑listed tech companies by PE sponsors in 2024, 16 in 2023, and 21 in each of 2021 and 2022—about 77 total across all US‑listed tech, not just SaaS/software, over four years.(cooleyma.com) Even if every single 2023–2024 tech take‑private were one of Chamath’s 200 software names (an unrealistic upper bound), the count would still be well below 100.
  • TechCrunch, citing PitchBook, similarly notes 136 PE‑led take‑private deals across all sectors in 2023 and 97 such deals by mid‑2024, 46 of which were in technology.(techcrunch.com) This aligns with Cooley’s much smaller US‑tech subset and confirms that the entire global tech take‑private pipeline is too small for 100 of one specific 200‑company basket to have disappeared.
  • S&P Global/Preqin show that global public‑to‑private deal counts hit a 16‑year high in 2023 with 96 PE take‑privates year‑to‑date by late October, across all industries. Software was a favored sector, but still just a slice of that 96.(spglobal.com) Again, this total is inconsistent with ~100 companies from one sub‑index alone being taken private in 2–3 years.
  • By early‑to‑mid 2025, M&A commentators are still talking about an expected or upcoming wave of software/SaaS consolidation driven by AI and depressed valuations—language that would not be used if a 100‑company take‑private purge had already occurred.(ionanalytics.com)
  • Many of the sort of cloud/SaaS names that appear in public‑software baskets (Amplitude, Freshworks, Procore, Toast and others) are still public in late 2025, with normal trading and ongoing operations, not taken private or forced into visible “egregious” rescue financings.(trueup.io)

Putting the data together:

  1. Across the entire US‑listed tech universe there were on the order of dozens, not hundreds, of PE take‑privates from 2021–2024, and an even smaller number if you restrict to software/SaaS.
  2. It is mathematically impossible for ~100 of Chamath’s specific ~200 public software companies to have exited via PE take‑privates in 2023–2025, given the aggregate deal counts.
  3. The broader prediction that “all” the unprofitable companies would be forced into capital at “very egregious terms” or PE exits also hasn’t materialized: many firms instead cut costs, slowed growth, and remained public while capital markets (including converts and follow‑ons) and valuations partially recovered.

Because both the scale (≈100 take‑privates out of ~200) and the mechanism (broadly forced PE exits or punitive financings within 2–3 years) are contradicted by observed deal volumes and by the continued public listing of many of these companies by late 2025, the prediction is best classified as wrong.