Description
Duolingo is an American language-learning website and mobile app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. The company uses a freemium model: the app and the website are accessible without charge, although Duolingo also offers a premium service for a fee.
As of June 2021, the language-learning website and app offers 106 different language courses in 40 languages. The app has over 300 million registered users across the world.
History
The project was initiated at the end of 2009 in Pittsburgh by Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn and his post-graduate student Severin Hacker. Von Ahn had sold his second company, reCAPTCHA, to Google and, with Hacker, wanted to work on something related to education. A driving motivation was Von Ahn's upbringing in Guatemala, where he saw how expensive it was for people in his community to learn English. Swiss-born Severin Hacker (co-founder and current CTO of Duolingo) believed that "free education will really change the world" and wanted to supply people an outlet to do so.
Von Ahn had observed that different individuals may learn best through different approaches and wanted to create a language program that served two purposes in one program. Duolingo originally achieved this by teaching its users a foreign language to a point where they could begin translating complex sentences and then would charge companies for these translation services, though this approach was later removed.
The project was originally sponsored by Luis von Ahn's MacArthur fellowship and a National Science Foundation grant. The founders considered creating Duolingo as a nonprofit organization but Von Ahn judged this model as unsustainable. On 19 October 2011, Duolingo announced that it had raised $3.3 million from a Series A first-round of funding, led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from author Tim Ferriss and actor Ashton Kutcher's investing firm A-Grade Investments.[21] Duolingo launched its private beta on 30 November 2011, and accumulated a waiting list of more than 300,000 people. The platform launched to the general public on 19 June 2012, at which point the waiting list had grown to around 500,000.
On 17 September 2012, Duolingo announced that it had raised a further $15 million from a Series B funding round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Union Square Ventures.
On 13 November 2012, Duolingo released their iOS app through the iTunes App Store as a free download for the Apple iPhone. This was followed by the release of an Android app on 29 May 2013, at which time Duolingo had a user base of around 3 million. By July 2013, the service has grown to 5 million users and was rated the #1 free education app in the Google Play store.
On 18 February 2014, Duolingo announced that it had raised $20 million from a Series C funding round led by Kleiner Caufield & Byers, with prior investors also participating. At this time, Duolingo had 34 employees and reported having about 25 million registered users and 12.5 million active users, though it later reported a figure nearer 60 million users.
On 10 June 2015, Duolingo announced that it had raised $45 million from a Series D funding round led by Google Capital, bringing its total funding to $83.3 million. The round valued the company at around $470 million and Duolingo reported having over 100 million users globally. In April 2016, it was reported that Duolingo had more than 18 million monthly users.
On 25 July 2017, Duolingo announced that it had raised $25 million in a Series E funding round led by Drive Capital , bringing its total funding to $108.3 million. The round valued Duolingo at $700 million, and the company reported passing 200 million users and having 25 million monthly users. It was reported that Duolingo had 95 employees. Funds from the Series E round would be directed toward creating initiatives such as a related educational flashcard app, TinyCards, and a testbed for initiatives challenging reading and listening comprehension, Duolingo Labs. On 01 August 2018, Duolingo reported passing 300 million users.
On 4 December 2019, it was announced that Duolingo raised $30 million in a Series F funding round from Alphabet’s investment company CapitalG. The round valued Duolingo at $1.5 billion. Duolingo reported having 30 million monthly active users at this time. Headcount at the company had increased to 200, and new offices had been opened in Seattle, New York and Beijing. Duolingo planned to use the funds to develop new products and further expand its team, including in engineering, business development, design, curriculum and content creators, community outreach and marketing.
On 28 June 2021, Duolingo filed to go public on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker DUOL.
