Duolingo touts $1.5B valuation; language company to hire 100 more people, mostly in Pittsburgh

Duolingo has earned the title of Pittsburgh’s first tech “unicorn” — investing lingo for those rare startups that achieve a valuation topping $1 billion.

Now valued at $1.5 billion, the 7-year-old digital language learning company plans to increase its workforce by about 50% — which could bring nearly 100 new jobs to the city by the end of next year, Duolingo spokeswoman Michaela Kron told the Tribune-Review.

The company, headquartered in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood, has grown from 95 employees in July 2017 to 200.

It has opened offices in New York, Seattle and Beijing.

With more than 30 million active monthly users, Duolingo now boasts the top-grossing education app worldwide, the company said.

“We started Duolingo with the mission of making education free and accessible to everybody, and I’m very proud that we’ve now also built a strong business,” Duolingo CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn said Wednesday in a statement.

‘Sticking to roots’ in Pittsburgh

Duolingo’s latest Series F funding round hiked its valuation to $1.5 billion — a 107% increase from a valuation of $700 million less than three years ago. The company has raised a total of $138 million in venture capital from investors.

“It’s great to have reached the milestone,” Kron said by phone Wednesday night.

Of Duolingo’s 200 employees, 166 now work based out of its East Liberty headquarters — where the company plans to stay and most of the new hires will be located, Kron said. Seventeen employees work in New York, eight in Seattle and nine in China.

“Over the years, we’ve gotten pressure to move elsewhere, especially from investors who think cities like San Francisco and New York are better places to run a company,” Kron said. “We are sticking to our roots here. We think Pittsburgh is a great place to run a company and to make a living.”

Compared to larger urban areas, “Pittsburgh has the unique advantage of good cost of living,” she said.

“We constantly think and talk about the growing tech scene in Pittsburgh,” Kron said. “It’s been exciting to see Google, Uber and Facebook move in and open offices here … but also all the tech startups, especially in robotics.”

Duolingo offers 91 courses in 30 languages as either free content with ads, or ad-free, premium content for a subscription fee.

In 2017, Duolingo launched its first course in an African language, Swahili, and offers lessons in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hawaiian, Navajo and even High Valyrian — the language spoken by Daenerys Targaryen on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Its app has become ubiquitous enough to be featured last month in a “Saturday Night Live” comedy sketch, with actress Kristen Stewart playing a befuddled young adult who needs a “Duolingo for Talking to Children” course.

Sustaining ‘an impressive pace’

Duolingo’s most recent funding round included $30 million from CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund and an undisclosed existing investor, Duolingo officials said in a news release. Duolingo will spend the cash infusion on developing new products and expanding its team.

Laela Sturdy, CapitalG general partner, credited Duolingo with “adding users and revenue at an impressive pace.”

She said the company has “demonstrated that sticking to their mission of providing free education is not only good for the world, but it’s also good for business.”

“We are thrilled to continue to support them in this next stage of growth,” Sturdy said in a statement.

New hires will span a variety of positions, including in engineering, business development, design, curriculum and content creators, community outreach and marketing.

Additional venture partners include Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Union Square Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Drive Capital, actor Ashton Kutcher and self-help guru Tim Ferriss.

Duolingo is available on iOS, Android and the web at duolingo.com.