Devaluations show dizzying ride for startups may be over

San Francisco

THE worth of hot technology startups seemed for years to go in only one direction: straight up. Now there are signs of growing unease over the dizzying valuations of some of the most richly priced private companies.

The latest sign has emerged with one such favourite, Snapchat, being discounted 25 per cent by one of its more recent investors, Fidelity, the mutual fund giant. Another startup, Dropbox, the widely used file storage service, was devalued by giant asset manager BlackRock earlier this year.

The funds' markdowns may t…