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The C.E.O. of Duolingo Wants to Have a Conversation About A.I.

The language-learning app with more than 100 million users has embraced artificial intelligence but has also faced consumer backlash for it.

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Jordyn Holman

By Jordyn Holman

Reporting from Duolingo’s Pittsburgh office, on Day 365 of her streak learning Mandarin.

Aug. 17, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

Duolingo’s office in Pittsburgh is playful and bright, like the language-learning app itself.

Inside a production studio, half a dozen social media managers were giddily filming videos featuring the app’s green owl mascot that users know for its many nudges and prompts to complete their lessons. Duolingo’s cheerful social media platforms are replete with videos of young people (and owls) performing the latest viral dance moves.

But lately, those pages haven’t been as lighthearted.

A few months ago, Luis von Ahn, the chief executive and a founder of Duolingo, sent a memo proclaiming that the company would become “A.I.-first.” That meant there would be new hires only if managers could prove that artificial intelligence could not do the job.

Many Duolingo users pushed back. How could a company built on helping people communicate rely on a technology lacking a human touch? And why not just ask a chatbot directly for language lessons instead of paying for an app that’s powered by A.I.?

In an interview at Duolingo’s headquarters, Mr. von Ahn said he took responsibility for the confusion about the use of A.I. at his company.

“In fact, we’re hiring at the same speed as we were hiring before,” Mr. von Ahn, 46, said. “You saw a lot of the interns. We have employees!” (The company employs 1,000 people, including nearly 50 summer interns.)

He was confident that Duolingo, which both uses A.I. and is threatened by it, could keep people at the center of its mission. The company had 130 million monthly active users at the end of June, up more than 20 percent from the previous year. Founded in 2011, Duolingo now has a market value around $15 billion.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

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Luis von Ahn standing near a bookcase with a few stuffed owls displayed.
Luis von Ahn started Duolingo in 2011. The language-learning app recently reported nearly 130 million monthly active users.Credit...Oliver Farshi for The New York Times

If someone hasn’t heard of Duolingo, describe how you make money.

We make an app where you can learn languages. Nowadays, you can also learn math, music and chess. Basically, you can learn things.

You can use it for free. But if you don’t pay us, you see an ad at the end of each lesson. We make money from the ads. If you do not like the ads, you pay to subscribe.

About 90 percent of our active users use Duolingo for free. The 10 percent that pay to subscribe give us somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of our revenue.

That’s a big reliance on a small number of people. Do you want it to be higher?

Our main marketing is those free users, because they tell their friends. Their friend may pay.

A lot of times investors ask us, “What’s the optimal number of people to pay?” I don’t know, and I don’t even know whether we want it to be higher or not. We’re very happy with our business so far.

Can you actually learn a language on the app? I’m using it to tap back into Mandarin, which I studied in school.

The purpose is for us to teach you the language fully. What does fully mean? There are lots of caveats here.

Our goal is to get you to the level where you can speak the language well enough to have a knowledge job. Now, you may not be a poet. You may have trouble with wordplay. You may have an accent.

There’s another caveat, which is that it takes a long time. On average, it takes about 550 hours on Duolingo to get to that level. Sometimes people will tell me: “I have a 1,000-day streak. Why am I not fluent?” If they only do one lesson a day, that’s three minutes. A 1,000-day streak is 50 hours.

You have gamified language learning. How do you feel about that?

The hardest thing about learning something by yourself is staying motivated. So we spend a lot of effort on keeping people motivated.

On your phone, you’re one tap away from Instagram or TikTok or whatever, so it’s very easy to get distracted. We have to work as hard as possible to make Duolingo into something enjoyable.

Let’s talk about A.I. Why would someone use Duolingo instead of a chatbot that they’re already talking with day to day?

Just having conversations in French on something like ChatGPT gets pretty boring after a while.

It doesn’t keep you there. We keep you on task with all the gamification. The thing that differentiates us for learning a language — or learning anything — is the engagement.

It’s been a few months since you wrote a memo about how Duolingo would be “A.I.-first.” Tell me what that means for Duolingo today.

Since we launched, Duolingo has always leaned into A.I. and automation. The idea was to have a computer teach you.

But about two years ago, this amazing revolution in A.I. came up: large language models. They allow you to manipulate language really well. Not quite as good as humans yet, but really well.

For example, it allows you to practice conversation. Something like 95 percent of people don’t want to talk to another person in a language that they are not very comfortable with. The emotional energy for that is just too high. The nice thing is, you don’t feel judged by a computer.

Generally, I think A.I. can allow us to accomplish a lot more. What used to take us years now can take us a week.

There was backlash after you sent the memo. What did you learn from that?

This was on me. I did not give enough context. Internally, this was not controversial.

Externally, as a publicly traded company some people assume that it’s just for profit. Or that we’re trying to lay off humans. And that was not the intent at all.

Down the line, do you expect A.I. to eliminate jobs?

We’ve never laid off any full-time employees. We don’t plan to.

From the beginning, we’ve had contractors that we use for temporary tasks, and our contractor force has gone up and down depending on needs.

In the next five years, people’s jobs will probably change. We’re seeing it with many of our engineers. They may not be doing some rote tasks anymore. What will probably happen is that one person will be able to accomplish more, rather than having fewer people.

How are you managing that transition for employees?

Every Friday morning, we have this thing: It’s a bad acronym, f-r-A-I-days. I don’t know how to pronounce it. Those mornings, we let each team experiment on how to get more efficient to use A.I.

Let’s discuss one of the biggest conversations in corporate America right now: diversity, equity and inclusion. I imagine a company like Duolingo benefits from having people from around the world. Have you had to adjust your approach?

We have not changed anything in the last year. We have users in every single country in the world, and we need a very diverse work force because we’re trying to match our user base.

The more we can match our user base, the better.

Does it feel harder to lean into that now?

It does feel harder, but not a lot harder. We’re a happy bubble here. There’s a lot of noise outside, but we keep hiring the same way.

You started your career teaching at Carnegie Mellon. Do professors make good C.E.O.s?

As a professor, I taught a large lecture with 400 students. You very quickly realize that anything you say that is slightly unclear will be misinterpreted. You get quite good at being very clear in what you’re saying. Clarity carries.

What have you had to work on as a leader?

The biggest thing is that I’m conflict avoidant. I will never be conflict seeking, and as a professor you can be OK with that. As a C.E.O., you have to be OK with tough conversations. I’m Latin American. In Guatemala, the way you say yes is “yes.” The way you say no is, “yeah?”

The first person that I ever had to fire did not understand that she was being fired and she came back the next day. I sugarcoated it so much she thought things were fine.

Tell me more about your upbringing in Guatemala.

There’s a way for me to paint it that sounds really crazy and tough, but it was not. Guatemala had a civil war when I was growing up.

The area where I lived was a middle-class area. I wouldn’t say it was as safe as Pittsburgh, but it was kind of safe. I wasn’t getting shot at every day. But every person I know had their car stolen at a certain point.

Did your family get theirs stolen?

A couple times. At gunpoint.

What was home life like? You’re an only child, like me. How did that shape you?

I wish I had siblings. One good thing was that my mom spent all her resources on me. On the other side, related to my inability to deal with difficult situations, I didn’t have anybody else competing for resources, because it was me and my mom.

What’s a piece of advice from your mom that has carried with you?

It’s her actions, not the stuff she says. She says kooky stuff. When I left to come to the United States, the thing she told me as I was leaving was, “Make sure to brush your teeth.” I learned from her how to care for people. She was a doctor.

It’s time for the lightning round. How many languages do you speak?

I know English and Spanish very well. Portuguese and French kind of well. Then minor amounts of Swedish, German and Japanese.

Did you learn them on Duolingo?

All of them on Duolingo. Except for English.

What was the first language you learned?

Spanish. I’m a native Spanish speaker.

What language do you dream in?

English and Spanish. My native language these days is Spanglish.

What is the most important phrase to learn when traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language?

“Thank you.”

What’s your Duolingo streak?

3,500.

What’s the most requested language that you don’t have?

Tagalog.

What’s the last question you asked A.I.?

What does I.C.E. stand for?

The next one was for an aviation cocktail recipe. OK, I probably shouldn’t have pulled that up, but I did.

How many hours do you sleep, and which hours do you sleep?

I normally go to sleep at around 10 p.m. and then I wake up around 4 a.m. So, about six hours. I can’t sleep past 4. If I go to bed at midnight, I also wake up at 4. Four is my time.

What are your plane habits? Do you sleep, work or zone out?

I am terrified of flying. I have never allowed this to stop me from flying, but my plane habit is to be freaked out.

What have you learned from your youngest employees?

The word “slay.” No, I’m kidding.

Are you?

My god, that’s all they say. “Slay, slay, slay.” So, OK, what am I learning? We hire a lot of fresh college grads. They really help us understand our audience, which skews young. When you finish a lesson, the owl may say some stuff. A lot of that comes from our young employees. Sometimes I’m like, “What does that mean?” So I’m learning how they talk, I guess.

Jordyn Holman is a Times business reporter covering management and writing the Corner Office column.

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