Chamath’s prediction has broadly played out along both dimensions he named: sequence (higher ed first, then spillover) and scope (from campuses into private enterprise).

1. Higher ed effects emerged first, and grew over time

   • The June 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC decision directly bound colleges and universities, forcing selective schools that had considered race in admissions to redesign processes while most other institutions were less affected.(brookings.edu)
   • In the first admissions cycles after the ruling, analysts noted uncertainty and predicted that the full impact would take years to see, with early reports showing some but not uniform changes in the racial makeup of incoming classes.(csmonitor.com)
   • By 2025, data show clearer and larger shifts: an AP analysis of 20 selective schools found Black freshman enrollment had dropped at nearly all of them, with steep declines at places such as Harvard (from about 18% of the 2023 class to 11.5% of the 2025 class).(apnews.com) This pattern—initial legal/policy adjustments followed by more visible demographic changes over subsequent classes—matches the “slow and then fast” dynamic he described.

2. The first domain was higher education, including later-explicit extensions

   • Immediately and necessarily, the ruling applied to civilian higher-ed admissions. Subsequent litigation sought to extend its logic even to institutions the Court had initially carved out: Students for Fair Admissions sued West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy over race-conscious admissions, and the Naval Academy ultimately stopped considering race in admissions, explicitly aligning with the Court’s reasoning.(cbsnews.com)
   • This shows the first wave was firmly centered on higher education before other sectors became primary targets.

3. Then similar legal and political pressure spread into private enterprise

   • Conservative legal groups explicitly used the SFFA precedent and related civil-rights statutes to attack private-sector diversity programs. The American Alliance for Equal Rights sued major law firms Morrison Foerster and Perkins Coie over diversity fellowships; both firms revised their programs to remove race-based eligibility, and the suits were then dropped.(washingtonpost.com)
   • The same network of activists brought a high‑profile case against the Fearless Fund’s grants for Black women founders under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866; a federal appeals court blocked the program, and the fund later permanently shut it down as part of a settlement.(wsj.com)
   • Professional and quasi‑corporate programs have also been forced to change: the State Bar of Wisconsin narrowed its diversity clerkship criteria away from race after a discrimination lawsuit, which the bar and commentators linked to the post‑SFFA climate.(reuters.com)
   • Large corporations have rolled back or restructured DEI efforts “amid conservative criticism and legal pressure inspired by the 2023 Supreme Court ruling,” including firms like Walmart and Lowe’s, which reduced race‑focused initiatives and DEI commitments.(apnews.com) Legal and political campaigns now regularly cite SFFA when challenging hiring, fellowships, supplier-diversity and grant programs in the private sector, demonstrating the predicted spillover.

Given the timeline (2023–2025) and the evidence that: (a) higher ed saw the earliest and most direct effects, which became more visible over successive application cycles, and (b) similar legal theories and political pressure are now reshaping DEI and race-conscious programs across private enterprises, Chamath’s forecast that the ruling’s impact would be gradual then rapid in higher education, and then extend into private enterprise policies and programs is substantially borne out by events to date.