Snapchat latest Silicon Valley unicorn to get reality check

It’s the end of th𝓀e ⛦rainbow for Silicon Valley’s unicorns — and the pots of gold are getting snatched away, too.

Fidelity Investments has slashed the value of its stake in Snapchat by 25🥃 percent, making the disappearing-photos app the latest and biggest casualty among so-called tech unicorns valued at $1 billion and up.

Snapchat — whose 25-year-old CEO Evan Spiegel ear♕lier this year was jetting around the globe courting investors in China and the Persian Gulf — saw its value sink to $12 billion in September from $16 billion in May.

“It’s embꦬlematic of the moment,” said Chris Douvos of Venture Investment Associates in Palo Alto, Calif. “These are companies that had extremely high valuations based on momentum and hype, and which are at last returning to Earth.”

A Snapchat spokeswoman declined to comment🍌 on Tuesday.

Douvos, whose firm🦹 invests in startups and venture funds, said he wasn’t privy to Snapchat’s financials. But 🦂he notes that investors are growing increasingly restless with startups that are racking up losses in the name of growth.

Indeed, Snapchat’s painful discount followed the bad news last month that cloud-s🅰torage startup Dropbox saw its $10𒉰 billion valuation take a 24 percent hit on a markdown by a BlackRock investment fund.

And last week, payments startup Square priced iജts initial public offering 35 percent below the $6 billion valuation it had won in ജits latest private-funding round during the past year.

It’s a painfu൩l reminder that these $1 billion-plus valuations have to stand up to the scrutiny of the public markets.

Ne💞vertheless, the markdown of Snapchat — whose viral spread among teens has grown its user base to more than 100 million — still came as a shock to many tech insiders.

Earlier this week, Snapchat confirmed that its users are viewing more than 6 billion videos a day on its mobile app. That staggering sum — triple what Snapchat c🃏laimed in May — is closing in on the 8 billion daily video views reported last week by Facebook.

Critics, however, note that Snapchat reportedly measures its video views in fractions of ♉a second, versus the three-second minimum required by Facebook — a crucial distinction for advert🍒isers.

Snapchat is “struggling to figure out how to monetize” its wildly popular app, and that’s worrying tech investors, acco🍒rding to one Silicon Valley insider.

“It’s never been𝓰 clear what the revenue model is, and the path from customer acquisition✨ to engagement to monetization is not always a straight line,” the source added.

Meanwhile, longstanding worries are growing that Dropbox’s file-sharing serv♚ices are a commodity that’s💖 vulnerable to competition from bigger rivals like Google and Amazon.

A few smaller unicorns also have been kneecapped, including Hobokeꦓn, NJ-based Jet.com.

Last week, Bloomberg News reported that e-commerce startup has settled 🍸on a $1.5 billion valuation to raise more than $500 million in cash. In July, Jet.com had been seeking a $3 billion valuation, according to reports.

A Jet.com spokeswoman declined to comment.