At the age of 21, he presented to the world his Captcha, this series of tests

used to verify that the user of a website is not a robot. Later, he would also
sell 2 inventions to Google, earning more than $20 million. Duolingo
already offers more foreign languages than its competitors, with 36
possibilities in total. They include little-spoken languages, such as
Hawaiian, Navajo or Gaelic, but also a fictional language from the hit
series Game of Thrones, High Valyrian, which has won over 1.2 million
users. Like Wikipedia, Duolingo uses volunteers to develop some of its
lessons. Seven years after its launch, the application has around 30 million
monthly active users, according to its own estimates. Venture capitalists
pumped $108 million into Duolingo, propelling its value to $700 million in
2017, $150 million more than the market capitalization of Rosetta Stone,
its historic competitor founded 27 years ago.

Not only does Dulingo offer more languages (Rosetta Stone offers 25), but
the application also attracts users with its free basic version, financed by
advertising, but which contrasts with the minimum €99 paid by the
500,000 registered with Rosetta Stone. Babbel, the other competing
application, declares that its 100 million dollars in turnover comes mainly
from its annual subscription at a minimum of 60$ subscribed to by more
than a million users. Conversely, only 1% of Duolingo users pay for the
ad-free version of the app (€84), but it has so many users that it has
managed to generate $36 million l last year. Luis von Ahn estimates that
this turnover will rise to $80 million in 2019 and $160 million in 2020,
with more and more users won over by the paid version and its additional
2019. features. The company's workforce is expected to increase from 170
to 200 employees by the end of the year. We will end with an anecdote
about duo, the duolingo mascot, who changed four times in 2011, 2012,
2014 and

If you miss your lesson for the day, an alert appears on your phone. Duo
comes to your screen and challenges you to continue your language
learning with its daily exercises. More than 2 billion people around the
world study at least one foreign language, and more and more on the
internet. Digital language learning generates no less than $6 billion in
revenue, and this figure is expected to rise to $8.7 billion in 2025.