Evidence through late 2025 shows that MBA-led search funds and ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) vehicles have grown rather than “effectively ceased” after January 2025.

Key points:

• A 2024 Stanford GSB Search Fund Study reports record numbers of searchers and investors, with 681 funds tracked and a record 94 core funds launched in 2023, and describes the community as experiencing “ongoing growth,” not a collapse. This model specifically targets relatively inexperienced, often MBA-trained entrepreneurs raising capital to buy and run small businesses.

  Sources: Stanford GSB Search Fund page and 2024 study highlights. (gsb.stanford.edu)

• In April 2025, Business Insider described search funds—"mini private equity"—as a growing path chosen by young professionals “often under 35 and frequently MBA graduates,” noting that the model “has seen record growth” and citing over 90 search funds launched in 2023. This directly contradicts the idea that newly graduated MBAs raising such capital is “not happening anymore.” (businessinsider.com)

• A September 2025 CNBC piece is explicit that “search funds boom as young buyers snap up firms”, highlighting investors’ strong interest and emphasizing that search funds have become an attractive alternative asset class during a broader VC/PE downturn. It again references the record 94 core funds launched and positions search funds as a safe port drawing more capital, not less. (cnbc.com)

• Multiple 2025 articles describe MBAs specifically as a major driver of ETA/search fund activity. A July–August 2025 piece notes “hundreds of US MBAs” are buying and operating small service businesses via search-fund-style ETA models, emphasizing that this trend is intensifying. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

• A June 2025 Forbes Council post, “Inside The Rise Of Search Funds,” frames search funds as a rising, maturing asset class with strong interest from both entrepreneurs and investors, again based on recent Stanford data. (forbes.com)

Across these independent sources, there is clear, contemporaneous evidence that:

1. The number of search funds and total capital in the model remain high and, by recent data, record-setting or near-record-setting.
2. MBA and young-professional participation is widely reported as growing, not shrinking.
3. Investors continue to fund these vehicles, with some sources explicitly saying search funds are thriving relative to traditional PE/VC.

Given that the prediction was effectively, “this won’t be funded anymore going forward,” and that within the same year (2025) we see headlines describing a boom in MBA-driven, investor-funded search funds, the prediction does not match observed reality.

Therefore, the prediction is wrong.