Tyler Cowen’s February 2022 column (which Chamath endorsed) explicitly claimed that wokeism has peaked in the U.S. and forecast that it would evolve into a subculture that is highly educated, highly white, fairly feminine, and no longer able to “run the country or all its major institutions.” (postbulletin.com)

Evidence that the ‘peak and ebb’ part looks directionally right

• Corporate and financial institutions have clearly retreated from the height of DEI/ESG enthusiasm seen around 2020–2021. Analyses of earnings calls show a steep drop (about 31%) in mentions of DEI/ESG beginning after early 2022, indicating firms are downplaying these agendas in public-facing settings. (bizpacreview.com)
• Major companies and asset managers that were once flagship “woke capitalism” advocates — including BlackRock, Bank of America, GM, PepsiCo, Boeing and others — have reduced or removed DEI/ESG language from filings and have scaled back related policies, often explicitly citing political and legal backlash against “woke” practices. (nypost.com)
• Polling shows the word woke has become significantly more negative in mainstream discourse: a 2023 USA Today/Ipsos poll found 40% of Americans consider “woke” an insult and only 32% a compliment; similar polling in 2024–2025 finds rising shares in both the U.S. and U.K. who treat “woke” as an insult and a non-trivial minority identifying as “anti‑woke.” (ipsos.com) This supports the idea that high-water-mark cultural influence was earlier and has since faced sustained backlash.
• State and federal policy has moved aggressively against DEI and related ideas in key arenas (especially education and law): Florida’s SB 266 restricts DEI programs and related content in public universities; Texas SB 12 limits DEI and LGBT-related content in schools; the Florida Bar has abolished its diversity-and-inclusion policy; and institutions such as the University of Michigan and Emory University have shut down or radically restructured DEI offices under pressure from a second Trump administration and its executive orders. (en.wikipedia.org) The U.S. State Department is even preparing to cut dozens of universities, including top elites, from its Diplomacy Lab program over DEI-based hiring, underscoring federal backlash. (theguardian.com) All of this suggests that “woke” frameworks are no longer uncontested at the top of U.S. institutions.

Evidence that the stronger parts of the prediction are not clearly met

• Public opinion is not simply that wokeism has shrunk to a marginal, easily isolated niche. In the same Ipsos poll, a majority (56%) of Americans defined “wokeness” as being informed and aware of social injustices, rather than as mere word-policing — a view especially common among Democrats and younger adults. (ipsos.com) This implies that while the label has become polarizing, the underlying concerns remain widely endorsed, not just within a thin, rarefied subculture.
• At the institutional level, “woke” or DEI-aligned positions still command significant power in many corporations and universities, especially in blue states and elite organizations. For example, Disney shareholders in 2025 overwhelmingly rejected an “anti‑woke” proposal to sever ties with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, and similar shareholder challenges at companies like Apple and Costco have failed, indicating continuing institutional support for LGBTQ+ and diversity benchmarks despite broader backlash. (them.us)
• Cowen and Chamath’s more specific sociological claim — that wokeism would consolidate into a highly educated, highly white, fairly feminine subculture — is difficult to verify. Public polling around “woke” shows partisan and age divides but does not clearly establish that its adherents are disproportionately white versus people of color; indeed, support for social-justice-framed issues is often at least as strong among non‑white respondents. (ipsos.com) Without robust demographic data on self-identified “woke” activists in elite institutions, this part of the prediction remains speculative rather than confirmable.
• The claim that this movement would no longer be capable of running the country or all its major institutions is inherently interpretive. The 2024 return of a Trump administration explicitly committed to dismantling DEI in federal agencies, universities, and corporate governance does show that wokeism is not politically hegemonic. (financeand.money) Yet the simultaneous persistence of strong DEI commitments in many blue-state institutions, HR departments, and parts of corporate America suggests that woke-aligned norms continue to shape significant swaths of “major institutions,” even if they now face a powerful counter-elite.

Because (a) there is solid evidence that the peak/ebb portion of the prediction matches post‑2022 trends, but (b) the more precise claims about the movement’s sociological composition and its diminished ability to “run” institutions cannot be cleanly tested and are partly contradicted by continued institutional and popular support, the overall forecast cannot be judged clearly right or wrong. It rests on contested, hard-to-measure concepts of cultural hegemony and subcultural identity.

Given these mixed and partly subjective elements, the fairest assessment is ambiguous: some aspects look broadly validated (peak and backlash), while others remain unproven or only partially consistent with the evidence available by late 2025.