ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Chamath
← Back to hostEpisode
Chamath @ 00:21:13Wrong
marketstechventure
If large‑cap tech M&A becomes effectively unavailable as an exit (as expected from 2020 onward), US public capital markets will respond over the following years by more actively funding and listing emerging growth tech companies, increasing IPO/going‑public activity compared with the 2000–2020 period.
the idea that there isn't an M&A on ramp anymore means that more capital and the capital markets will become more fluid, and we will support emerging growth companies in the public markets, is my suspicion.View on YouTube
Explanation

Evidence since 2020 shows a brief IPO boom rather than the sustained structural shift toward public exits for emerging‑growth U.S. tech companies that Chamath predicted.

  1. Overall U.S. IPO activity:

    • U.S. IPOs surged to 480 in 2020 and a record 1,035 in 2021 (driven heavily by SPACs), but then collapsed to 181 in 2022, 154 in 2023, and roughly the low‑200s in 2024, far below the 2021 peak. (stockanalysis.com)
    • Analysis from a major asset manager notes that after 2021, IPO activity fell below the 20‑year average, contradicting the idea of a persistently more active public market vs the 2000–2020 period. (ft.com)

  2. Tech‑specific IPOs vs 2000–2020:

    • For U.S. tech IPOs, data compiled by Visual Capitalist show 261 in 2000, then mostly double‑digit counts each year from 2001–2019; total tech IPOs over 2000–2019 are 947, an average of about 47 per year. (visualcapitalist.com)
    • Post‑prediction: tech IPOs were 48 in 2020 and 126 in 2021, but only 6 in 2022 and 9 in 2023, among the lowest on record. (visualcapitalist.com)
    • Averaging 2020–2023 (48, 126, 6, 9) yields roughly the same annual tech‑IPO volume as 2000–2019, not a clearly higher and more supportive regime. Excluding the one‑off 2021 spike, the post‑2020 years are markedly worse than the 2000–2020 period.

  3. Many major growth tech firms remain private:

    • Reporting highlights that leading growth companies such as SpaceX, Stripe, and OpenAI increasingly choose to remain private, with private markets exceeding $5.7 trillion and supplying ample late‑stage capital, while U.S. IPO counts in 2024 are far below 2021 levels. (investopedia.com)
    • Other coverage notes that the number of listed companies in the U.S. is shrinking and IPO activity has been weak, due to abundant private capital and listing frictions, again implying no broad shift toward public markets as the primary growth‑company exit. (thetimes.co.uk)

  4. Big‑tech M&A not fully shut, undermining the premise:

    • While antitrust scrutiny of dominant platforms clearly increased (new DOJ/FTC merger guidelines and high‑profile suits against Google, Meta, Apple, and attempts to block deals such as Nvidia–Arm and Microsoft–Activision), several large tech acquisitions still closed, and law‑firm and policy analyses describe a slowdown and higher scrutiny, not the effective disappearance, of big‑tech M&A. (aoshearman.com)

Putting this together: there was a short‑lived, pandemic‑era IPO/SPAC boom that partially fits his thesis, but from 2022 onward IPO volumes (including tech) have been below long‑run averages and many top emerging‑growth tech firms continue to rely on private capital instead of going public. Over the multi‑year horizon since 2020, U.S. public markets have not become sustainably more active or more supportive of emerging‑growth tech listings than in 2000–2020, so the prediction is best judged wrong overall.