Available evidence as of late 2025 supports Chamath’s prediction about LK‑99.

By mid‑August 2023, replication attempts had established a broad consensus that LK‑99 is not a room‑temperature superconductor; in pure form it behaves as an insulator, and the initially reported superconducting‑like signatures were traced to non‑superconducting magnetic effects and impurities (especially Cu₂S). (en.wikipedia.org)

Multiple experimental studies that synthesized LK‑99 using or improving on the original procedure found no zero resistance at any relevant temperature and instead reported a highly resistive (insulating) material whose magnetization is consistent with a weakly magnetic or diamagnetic solid, not a superconductor. One detailed re‑evaluation explicitly concluded that LK‑99 is better classified as a diamagnetic semiconductor rather than a room‑temperature superconductor. (arxiv.org) Another investigation reproduced the sharp resistivity drop but showed it arises from a first‑order structural transition in Cu₂S impurities, with LK‑99 itself behaving as a semiconductor with weak diamagnetism, again ruling out superconductivity. (sciencedirect.com)

Later high‑quality single‑crystal work found phase‑pure LK‑99 crystals to be highly insulating and optically transparent, with temperature‑dependent magnetization measurements showing a predominantly diamagnetic response plus a small ferromagnetic component—no anomalies indicative of any superconducting transition from 2 K up to 800 K. (scisimple.com) Theoretical and experimental studies through 2024–2025 now describe LK‑99 as a wide‑gap or charge‑transfer Mott insulator with interesting correlated‑electron and flat‑band physics, but not as a superconductor. (arxiv.org)

Regarding technological impact, after the initial 2023 hype faded, LK‑99 has settled into the literature as a niche platform for studying correlated electrons, with no major practical applications or technologies emerging from it to date. The scientific narrative has become that LK‑99 was a high‑profile false alarm in the search for room‑temperature superconductivity, now mainly of interest as a case study and as a correlated‑electron material, not as a transformative superconductor. (en.wikipedia.org)

Overall, subsequent investigations have indeed concluded that LK‑99 is not a practical room‑temperature superconductor and that its observed behavior is largely explained by diamagnetism (plus minor ferromagnetism) and impurities, with no major technological impact—matching Chamath’s stated intuition.