Available data on the post‑boom SPAC market indicate that a majority of the 2020–2021 SPAC cohort ultimately liquidated and returned capital, with technology/TMT-focused vehicles making up a disproportionate share of those liquidations—consistent with Chamath’s prediction that the “overwhelming majority” of tech SPACs still searching in late 2022 would “wind up.”

Key points:

1. Large overhang of SPACs still searching in late 2022
   By December 2022 there were still more than 400 SPACs “looking for acquisition partners” and “over 400 SPACs still searching for capital,” many of them from the 2020–2021 boom period and heavily tech-oriented. (marketbrief.edweek.org) This is essentially the set Chamath was talking about (the “several hundred” still searching).

2. Liquidations ended up exceeding completed mergers for the backlog
   SPAC Research data summarized by The Logic show that from January 2022 through July 2023, 274 SPACs dissolved without finding a merger candidate, versus only 147 that successfully completed mergers during the same period—about 65% liquidations among SPACs whose fate was decided in that window. (thelogic.co) That is already well above the 50% threshold Chamath was pointing to, and this liquidation wave was drawn largely from the backlog of SPACs that were still searching in 2022.

3. By cohort: a majority of 2021 SPACs liquidated
   SPACInsider’s full‑year 2024 review reports that of the 613 SPAC IPOs from 2021, 314 (51.2%) had opted to liquidate by the end of 2024, while 227 had completed de‑SPAC mergers and 72 were still searching or in the “announced” stage. (spacinsider.com) Among the 541 SPACs from that cohort whose outcome was resolved (liquidated or merged), about 58% liquidated (314 / (314+227)). Those 2021 IPOs constitute the bulk of the “several hundred” SPACs still searching as of late 2022, so their realized outcomes are a direct test of the prediction.

4. Boom‑era SPACs overall: about half failed to find any target
   A 2025 Reuters Breakingviews analysis, drawing on SPACInsider data, notes that during the 2020–2021 boom about 860 SPAC IPOs raised roughly $250 billion, and that “roughly half of them…failed to find a target within their typical two-year deadline, instead returning the cash to shareholders.” (reuters.com) That is again squarely in line with a “more than 50% will liquidate” view for the overall pool of boom‑era SPACs.

5. Tech/TMT SPACs were particularly prone to liquidate
   A SPAC Consultants 2023 outlook notes that as of February 7, 2023 there were 348 SPACs scheduled to expire in 2023, and that SPACs looking for targets in the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) sector accounted for the majority of the 2023 liquidations so far; it also counted 158 TMT‑focused SPACs still seeking targets and projected that 2023 liquidations would exceed those of 2021 and 2022 combined. (spacconsultants.com) Given that tech/TMT-focused SPACs were a large and above‑average share of liquidations, the liquidation rate for the tech‑focused subset Chamath described is, if anything, higher than the already‑documented >50% rate for the 2021 cohort overall.

6. Cumulative liquidation numbers support the >50% threshold
   Aggregating SPAC Research figures cited in legal and market analyses shows ~140 liquidations in 2022, 193 in 2023, and 58 in 2024, for roughly 391 liquidations since the start of 2022 alone—most of them from the 2020–2021 IPO cohorts that formed the backlog still searching in late 2022. (businesslawtoday.org) That scale of liquidations, relative to the roughly 800–900 boom‑era SPACs, is consistent with (and in some cuts clearly above) a 50% liquidation rate.

Caveat: No public dataset slices the universe exactly as “tech-focused SPACs still searching as of September 2022,” so we cannot compute a precise denominator just for that subset. However:

• The majority of liquidations in 2023 were in TMT-focused SPACs. (spacconsultants.com)
• For the main 2021 SPAC cohort—which provided most of those tech vehicles—more than half have already liquidated, and among resolved outcomes, liquidations significantly outnumber mergers. (spacinsider.com)

Taken together, the best available evidence strongly supports that more than 50% of the “several hundred” tech‑oriented SPACs still hunting for deals in September 2022 ultimately failed to complete a business combination and instead liquidated and returned cash. That makes Chamath’s normalized prediction essentially correct.