The prediction has effectively come true by late 2025.

1. “Tens of thousands of startups” around generative AI
Multiple market analyses now estimate tens of thousands of generative‑AI firms worldwide. Several 2024–2025 industry reports put the number of generative‑AI startups/companies at roughly 67,000+ globally, up from about 50,000 at the end of 2023, with projections that it could approach 100,000 if current trends continue. (seo.goover.ai) Broader AI tracking from Tracxn similarly finds over 60,000 AI companies as of 2024, consistent with the “tens of thousands” order of magnitude. (artsmart.ai) This matches Friedberg’s qualitative claim that roughly 100,000 startups would emerge around this wave of technology.

2. Generative AI as the focal point of the next hype/bubble cycle
Venture data show AI—driven heavily by generative AI—became the clear center of the funding cycle after 2022:

• AI’s share of global startup funding jumped from ~13% in 2022 to about 33% by late 2024, even as overall VC volumes fell, with global generative‑AI funding alone surging from under $1B years earlier to around $40–45B in 2024. (link.springer.com)
• By the first half of 2025, AI startups accounted for about 53% of global VC funding and 64% in the U.S., meaning over half of all venture dollars were flowing into AI, much of it into generative‑AI infrastructure and applications. (axios.com)
• Barron’s reports that close to one‑third of all VC funding in 2024 went to AI companies, with a heavy concentration in Silicon Valley, explicitly noting AI as the key driver of the modest rebound in VC activity. (barrons.com)

At the same time, mainstream financial and policy commentary now explicitly refers to an “AI bubble” or “AI valuation bubble”: there are warnings about a speculative boom driven by sky‑high valuations, revenue multiples of 20–50x for AI startups, and trillion‑dollar-plus aggregate valuations concentrated in a small set of generative‑AI leaders (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, etc.). (ainvest.com) An MIT‑linked study finding 95% of generative‑AI projects failing to show ROI is being cited as classic bubble‑type evidence—massive capital deployment with little near‑term economic return. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Putting this together: since 2023 the dominant Silicon Valley funding narrative and hype cycle has clearly centered on generative AI, with an enormous number of startups formed and widespread concern about a bubble. That matches Friedberg’s forecast about both scale (“100,000 startups”) and the sector becoming the focal point of the next tech hype/bubble cycle, so the prediction is best judged as right.