Duolingo
Consumer · AI language learning
- HQ
- Pittsburgh, US
- Website
- duolingo.com
What leadership said about AI on earnings calls (above the line, stacked by event type) vs how many AI roles the company actually posted (below the line). Each side scales to its own peak — read shape, not absolute height.
Trajectory events (left half, cyan) vs active AI roles posted (right half, slate), bucketed by stage. Darker cell = more activity for this company.
Duolingo published 20,500 course units in Q1, more than tenfold the historical rate two years ago, enabled by AI acceleration.
Management notes that AI inference costs for video call features have decreased significantly, enabling the expansion of these features to lower-priced subscription tiers.
Duolingo Max subscribers accounted for 9% of total subscribers in Q3 2025, with bookings for the tier doubling year-over-year.
Management reported that AI-related inference costs have declined naturally without specific optimization efforts.
“AI-related costs have declined 'just without us doing anything'”— Luis von Ahn
Duolingo is optimizing the Max Video Call feature using a new metric: average number of words spoken per Max subscriber.
Gross margin outperformed expectations due to lower AI-related costs, specifically reduced API call and token expenses.
Consumer · AI language learning
Currently tracking 1 active AI role, up 24% versus the prior 4 weeks. Primary focus: Post-train · Engineering. Salary range $221k–$331k (avg $276k).