ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
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Chamath @ 00:29:00Right
politicsgovernment
In the wake of the June 2023 Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, major U.S. corporations (e.g., large public companies like Apple, Meta/Facebook, Exxon) that operate race-based hiring, recruiting, or advancement programs will face legal challenges that will force them to materially modify or end those explicitly race-based programs; as a result, some existing DEI- and ESG-related practices and metrics that rely on explicit racial preferences will become legally impermissible in the U.S.
The really important question after that will be what happens to companies like Apple or Facebook or Exxon, who have race based programs to try to attract African American engineers or Hispanic chemists… Will those get challenged and will those companies have to change? And my friend’s thoughts on that were that, yes, that those would also change. And that’s going to have a really important impact on private enterprise and how they approach this stuff and how DEI stuff works and frankly, downstream, how ESG works, because all these ESG check boxes now, some of them will actually become illegal.View on YouTube
Explanation

Evidence since mid‑2023 shows that the dynamic Chamath described has in fact played out:

  1. Race‑exclusive corporate programs have been sued and forced to change or end.

    • Pfizer’s high‑profile Breakthrough Fellowship Program, originally limited to Black, Latino and Native American applicants, was challenged by the group Do No Harm as unlawful race discrimination. After the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative‑action ruling, a U.S. appeals court revived the case; Pfizer then revised the criteria in 2023 to be race‑neutral and, in a 2025 settlement, agreed to stop accepting new fellows altogether. (reuters.com)
    • Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights has brought a series of suits against race‑exclusive private‑sector programs (e.g., law‑firm diversity fellowships at Winston & Strawn, Perkins Coie, Morrison & Foerster). At least one, Winston & Strawn, changed its fellowship eligibility to race‑neutral and the case was then dismissed. (washingtonpost.com)
    • The Fearless Fund venture‑capital grant program for Black women business owners, backed by major corporate partners, was held likely unlawful under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 by the Eleventh Circuit, leading to an injunction and later settlement; the race‑exclusive grant program was shut down. (mondaq.com)

  2. Broader corporate DEI programs are being rolled back under legal and political pressure.

    • Meta disbanded its DEI programs in early 2025, explicitly citing a changed U.S. legal/policy environment and growing scrutiny of DEI and perceived preferential treatment, and dropped tools like its Diverse Slate hiring approach and representation goals. (theverge.com)
    • Many large companies (e.g., Salesforce, Amazon, Google, Meta, Walmart, McDonald’s, Citi) have scaled back or rebranded DEI initiatives, often softening or removing explicit race‑based targets in response to post‑SFFA legal and political risk. (businessinsider.com)

  3. Courts and regulators have made it riskier to rely on explicit racial preferences in employment‑adjacent metrics and programs.

    • In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025), the Supreme Court unanimously removed heightened pleading standards for so‑called “reverse discrimination” Title VII claims, explicitly recognizing that discrimination suits against DEI‑related practices must be evaluated under the same standard as other discrimination claims. Commentators note this will fuel challenges to employer DEI programs post‑SFFA. (en.wikipedia.org)
    • Conservative groups and some state officials now explicitly warn corporations that race‑based hiring, promotion goals, or contracting preferences pose litigation and enforcement risk; shareholder campaigns at Apple and others argue DEI creates significant legal exposure in light of recent Supreme Court decisions, even as Apple has so far chosen not to dismantle its DEI structure. (cnbc.com)

Taken together, these developments match Chamath’s forecast in substance: major private employers and allied institutions running explicitly race‑based hiring, recruiting, fellowship, or grant programs have faced legal challenges that forced them to materially revise or end those programs, and at least some DEI/ESG practices built on explicit racial preferences have been deemed unlawful or untenable in the U.S. Not every big name he mentioned (e.g., Apple, Exxon) has yet lost a case or completely abandoned DEI, but the general prediction about post‑SFFA legal attacks on corporate race‑based initiatives and the resulting pullback has proven accurate.