The time span from Visicalc (1979) to Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) to MS Excel (1985) was roughly five years, maybe ten years for the emergent dominance of MS Excel over the earlier two. Now it seems like five to ten months for one AI platform to outpace another.
I have been playing around with Grok, integrated as it is with X. It is a pleasure to nearly instantaneously do reality checks on social media claims. For example:
Ubisoft great replaced the men in their company now its dying a slow and well-deserved death. https://t.co/oYZY0LuOxP pic.twitter.com/En2jBEFq6O
— Carl Benjamin 🏴 (@Sargon_of_Akkad) January 24, 2026
I am not a gamer. I have a vague awareness of some of the ebbs and tides in that industry but no real knowledge. The before and after pictures are compelling but are they real. Are they even Ubisoft, and if so, are they even comparable groups. I would have guessed not, but what does Grok say?
The implied argument seems to be: Ubisoft focused on hiring female gamer talent, replaced its male employees with women, and subsequently suffered financial destruction.
My knee-jerk questions are
What was the female percent of Ubisoft's workforce in from 2007 to 2025 by year?Did the Ubisoft market capitalization increase or decrease between 2007 and 2025?
Me: What was the female percent of Ubisoft's workforce in from 2007 to 2025 by year?
Grok:
Year Female Percentage Notes/Source2007 20% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2007; from Ubisoft's 2007 Reference Document.2008 No data available Diversity metrics were not consistently reported in early annual documents.2009 No data available2010 No data available2011 No data available2012 No data available2013 No data available2014 No data available2015 No data available2016 No data available2017 No data available2018 No data available2019 21.3% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2019.2020 22% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2020.statista.com2021 23.5% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2021. statista.com2022 25.5% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2022. statista.com2023 25.9% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. statista.com2024 25.9% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. statista.com2025 26.3% Fiscal year ending March 31, 2025; from Ubisoft's 2024-25 Universal Registration Document.Note: Data is based on fiscal years ending in March, which may not align perfectly with calendar years. Comprehensive gender diversity reporting by Ubisoft began around 2019, with earlier figures sparse and primarily from official documents or secondary sources like Statista. For years without data, no reliable public information was found despite extensive searches.
Twelve years to increase the female headcount from 20% in 2007 to 21% in 2019. Then six years to raise it from 21% 2019 to 26% in 2025.
The posts argument seems to be that there was a a very large increase in the female headcount from 2007 to 2014 but that is not evident from the (incomplete) numbers. 20% to 26% over eighteen years is not necessarily a disruptive issue. It can be disruptive, depending on how the policies are executed but that is a different issue.
Also, there is the issue of where the headcount is being added and how that is affecting the rest of the organization. If you are a software company and you pad your HR and Marketing headcount to achieve overall increases in quota, then you can expect an increase A&G costs without necessarily any increase in productivity.
This warrants a follow-on question.
Me: What was Ubisoft personnel turnover by year from 2007 to 2025?
Grok: [in part] Ubisoft does not publicly disclose detailed employee turnover rates (voluntary or total attrition/turnover percentage) on a consistent year-by-year basis from 2007 to 2025 in its annual reports, Universal Registration Documents (URDs), or other official filings. Comprehensive turnover statistics are rare for most companies unless specifically required or voluntarily highlighted in sustainability/HR sections, and Ubisoft's disclosures focus more on headcount totals, diversity metrics, and recent restructurings rather than historical turnover percentages.
Go to the link for more detail but basically not enough data is public and there was too much else going on (scandals within the company, restructurings i.e. involuntary turnover, etc.) for Grok to estimate an answer.
OK. A marginal increase in female employee headcount but no visibility whether this came in the core business of software or not, nor how that might have affected retention of talent, always a strategic issue for software companies.
How about market capitalization. How has that changed between 2007 and 2025?
Me: What was the market capitalization of Ubisoft in 2007 and what is it in 2025?
Grok: In 2007, Ubisoft's market capitalization at the end of the year (December 31, 2007) was approximately $4.60 billion USD (or around €2.57–€3 billion equivalent, depending on exchange rates at the time). This figure comes from historical market cap tracking sources like CompaniesMarketCap.com, which lists end-of-year values. Earlier in the fiscal year (as of March 31, 2007, Ubisoft's FY-end), it was lower, around €1.66 billion (roughly $2.1–2.2 billion USD at 2007 exchange rates), per Ubisoft's own 2007 Reference Document. Some sources show varying annual figures (e.g., ~$8.38 billion in one dataset), but these appear inconsistent or possibly misaligned with calendar-year vs. fiscal-year reporting; the ~$4.6B end-2007 value aligns across multiple reliable trackers.In 2025, Ubisoft's market capitalization showed significant decline amid ongoing challenges (restructurings, losses, stock plunges). At the end of 2025 (December 31, 2025), it was approximately $1.01–1.02 billion USD (or €0.81–1 billion EUR). As of late January 2026 (current context around January 23–24, 2026), it had fallen further to roughly $0.64 billion USD (€547–812 million EUR, varying by exact date and source like Yahoo Finance, CompaniesMarketCap, or Euronext quotes), reflecting the stock trading below €4–6 per share with ~130–140 million shares outstanding.
Ubisoft went from $4.6 billion in 2007 to $7-10 billion circa 2010-2020 to $0.6 billion today.
Clearly a picture of a troubled company. But was the trouble because of a huge increase in female headcount.
In about five minutes Grok give me the sort of data which reinforces my skepticism of this Just So story.
Software in general and entertainment software are highly volatile sectors so not surprising to see big numerical fluxes. In such times, management errors can be very influential and compounding.
I can imagine a scenario where management in 2007 communicated a desire to hire more female talent and might have been perceived to have had quota targets. In that sort of environment, it would not be surprising to see an acceleration in unplanned turnover among your most experienced and successful software engineers whose talents were then in constant demand. It wasn't the increase in female headcount that might have been the problem so much as perceived discriminatory behavior of management against the then current employees which could have been the problem.
I can imagine a scenario where management in 2007, riding a strong market, got distracted and focused on non-business critical DEI, ESG, and quota type issues which would have similar negative impacts on the existing employee base. Such distraction might be seen as a leading indicator explaining the apparent later management problems.
There are all sorts of scenarios.
This post suggests that Ubisoft switched from a majority male to a majority female (photo) employee base and that that switch was what caused the decline in market capitalization. Just three Grok queries confirms that the situation is far more complex than the suggested causal relationship. Possibly a DEI and quotas mindset contributed to later problems but market capitalization increase and collapse are clearly being driven by a host of issues beyond female headcount.
In five minutes of thinking (and much longer to write up), with Grok, the proposed argument can be dismissed as improbable.
What a blessing. In before times, that would have been a multi-hour effort and not worth the candle. Now? It is an interesting enough argument to invest five minutes to arrive at a least an indicative answer.
Excellent tool. It provides pointers to both its sources and the issues in the data that need resolving in order to get at a more robust answer.
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