Chamath said the Coupa–Thoma Bravo deal was the start of a “tidal wave” of private‑equity‑sponsored deals in tech, especially SaaS, over the following years. Looking at 2023–2025, that broad directional call did play out.

Key evidence that a multi‑year PE wave in tech/SaaS did emerge:

• Coupa itself was taken private by Thoma Bravo in an ~$8 billion all‑cash deal that closed in 2023, marking a major software/SaaS take‑private exactly in the timeframe he was talking about. (thomabravo.com)
• 2023 saw a series of large PE take‑privates of software and SaaS companies, including Sumo Logic (SaaS analytics) by Francisco Partners for $1.7 billion and Qualtrics by Silver Lake and CPP Investments for $12.5 billion. (franciscopartners.com) S&P Global noted that global PE public‑to‑private deals reached 96 by Oct. 25, 2023—the highest annual total in 16 years—with software singled out as a popular target and Qualtrics and New Relic highlighted among the year’s notable software take‑privates. (spglobal.com)
• PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch shows 136 PE‑led take‑privates globally in 2023, up 15% from 2022, and by mid‑2024 there were already 97 such deals, 46 of them in the technology sector alone—on pace to match 2023’s high level. (techcrunch.com) Those 2024 tech take‑privates include many SaaS or software firms such as Adevinta, Alteryx, PowerSchool, Squarespace and Nuvei. (techcrunch.com)
• By 2025 the trend is very clear in software/SaaS specifically. RBC Capital estimates that software M&A activity in 2025 is up 78%, with private‑equity software deals more than doubling versus the prior year as PE buyers hunt for undervalued SaaS and software assets. (businessinsider.com) A Bespoke Partners analysis reports that in just the first half of 2025, enterprise SaaS companies were involved in 405 private‑equity transactions out of 671 SaaS deals overall, underscoring intense PE focus on SaaS. (linkedin.com) Regionally, for example, PE investments in India’s enterprise SaaS sector reached $1.38 billion in the first seven months of 2025, a 66% increase over the entire year 2024. (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
• The activity has clearly extended “into other realms” of tech beyond classic horizontal SaaS: PE firms have bought cybersecurity companies like Darktrace (Thoma Bravo), education software providers PowerSchool and Instructure, and various infrastructure and data‑analytics software firms. (ft.com)

Important nuance:

• Some tech‑specific M&A datasets show that 2023 alone was not an immediate step‑function higher in PE tech deals versus 2021–2022. Cooley’s 2023 tech M&A review finds private equity’s share of tech M&A fell to a six‑year low (27%), with only 16 PE take‑privates of US‑listed tech companies in 2023, down from 21 in both 2021 and 2022. (jdsupra.com) European/US tech‑only data similarly show PE take‑private volume peaking in 2021–2022 and moderating in 2023 before re‑accelerating. (2023.stateofeuropeantech.com)

Putting it together, the multi‑year pattern after late 2022 is exactly what Chamath described: a sustained and then intensifying wave of private‑equity‑backed acquisitions of tech companies, heavily weighted toward SaaS but spreading across software verticals. Even though 2023 was a softer year for tech‑only PE relative to the 2021–2022 peak, the broader 2023–2025 data show a pronounced and growing PE wave in tech/SaaS, with Coupa among the early high‑profile deals in that cycle. On balance, that makes his prediction substantively right, albeit with a less immediate spike in 2023 than the word “tidal wave” might imply.