Available data through late 2025 strongly support Friedberg's macro call that hundreds of unicorns valued at 2020–21 peaks would not be able to float at comparable valuations in public markets over the following 3–5 years. By 2021 there were over 800 global unicorns, and by mid‑2022 more than 1,000 were piled up in the private markets; TechCrunch described a ‘unicorn glut’ where many 2021-era unicorns were mispriced relative to public comps and noted that even if the IPO window reopened, a large portion of these companies would still be unable to exit at their old valuations. (en.wikipedia.org) A 2024 Economist summary reported that 344 unicorns were minted in 2021 and that about 700 unicorns with a combined $2.4 trillion valuation still had not IPO’d or been acquired, with investors reluctant to fund them at lofty valuations and instead ‘mulling how to sell their stakes’—evidence of a large backlog of companies whose private prices the public markets will not currently bear. (edwardconard.com) Bloomberg reporter Katie Roof’s 2025 analysis of the 2021 cohort found that of 354 VC-backed firms newly valued over $1 billion in 2021, only 6 had gone public via IPO and 4 via SPAC, fewer than 30% had raised any new capital in three years, and almost half of those did so in down rounds; she described this as an ‘era of the zombie unicorn’ where many former unicorns had become ‘unicorpses’. (edwardconard.com) Among the unicorns that have listed since 2022, IPO valuations are typically far below their peak private marks: Instacart went public at about $9.9 billion versus a roughly $39 billion private valuation in 2021, and Klarna listed around $15 billion after having been valued at about $45–46 billion at the height of the BNPL boom. (fortune.com) PitchBook data summarized in 2025 show that almost every major IPO in Q2 2025 came to market below its prior peak valuation, with examples like MNTN, Circle, Hinge, and Chime all going public at steep discounts to their earlier private highs; Investopedia likewise notes that most of the tech unicorns that IPO’d in 2025 did so below their peak private valuations. (fortune.com) At the same time, industry data from Carta and PitchBook show elevated down-round rates at late-stage and unicorn levels, confirming that many startups have had to accept lower valuations rather than sustain 2021 pricing. (carta.com) Taken together, these facts show that (a) there are indeed many hundreds of unicorns still stuck in the private markets at valuations public investors won’t currently validate, and (b) those that have tested the public markets in 2022–25 almost always did so at large haircuts versus their boom-time valuations. Although we cannot observe every hypothetical IPO, the realized IPO discounts, pervasive down rounds, and large backlog of ‘zombie’ unicorns align closely with Friedberg’s claim that, over the 3–5 years after early 2022, hundreds of highly valued private companies would be unable to achieve their peak private valuations in the public markets, so his prediction is best judged as right.