Duolingo: $35 Million Funding And $2.4 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● Nov 20, 2020
  • Duolingo — a popular language-learning platform — announced it has raised $35 million in funding at a $2.4 billion valuation from Durable Capital Partners LP and General Atlantic

Duolingo — a popular language-learning platform — announced it has raised $35 million in funding at a $2.4 billion valuation from Durable Capital Partners LP and General Atlantic. Including this round of funding, the company has raised a total of $183 million.

With this round of funding, Duolingo is going to use the new funding round to fuel continued investment into the R&D of its suite of global language-learning products as well as to accelerate the growth and expansion of its team.

Duolingo has seen robust growth every year since its creation in 2011 and with over 500 million total app downloads and over 100% revenue increases during each of the past three years. And while learning content on Duolingo is free, the company has grown its revenue with advertising and a paid subscription offering Duolingo Plus — which removes ads and provides other additional features.

The additional recent developments at Duolingo include a launch of Duolingo ABC — which was designed to teach children ages 3-7 how to read; a breakthrough of the Duolingo English Test with 1500% year-over-year growth in test-takers; and appointment of experienced new board members: Duolingo added former US Deputy Secretary of Education Jim Shelton as well as veteran tech executives Amy Bohutinsky and Sara Clemens to its Board of Directors. Plus the company has grown from 200 employees at the end of 2019 to 350 today.

KEY QUOTES:

“At Duolingo, we’re driven by our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. I’m proud of the impact we have achieved while also significantly growing our business. In welcoming Durable as our newest investor, and securing General Atlantic’s deepened commitment, we look forward to partnering with them and using this new capital to further scale our business and bring Duolingo to millions more people worldwide.”

— Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo

“Duolingo is the kind of business that matches what we look for in our investments: they are mission-driven, have a great culture, and great people that can compound significantly over time. Luis is also an incredible entrepreneur, and we’re very excited to partner with Duolingo for their next phase of growth.”

— Henry Ellenbogen, founder and chief investment officer of Durable Capital Partners LP

“We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with Luis and Duolingo after initially investing in the business in April 2020. Duolingo has successfully built foundational learning technology, an effective and engaging product, and a passionate community of users. We believe the company has additional opportunity to strengthen its market-leading position and expand its product, team, and customer base, while capitalizing on the global acceleration in digital learning.”

— Tanzeen Syed, Managing Director at General Atlantic