When Luis von Ahn was 8 years old, growing up in Guatemala City, his mother bought him a computer. He was upset because he actually wanted a Nintendo, he recalls. “But you know, it changed my life because I learned how to use a computer.” Developing that skill eventually led to his creation of the educational app Duolingo, which is used by millions around the world to learn languages, and now other subjects, such as math and music. The company went public in 2021 and is currently valued at $5.7 billion.
“Education has always been a big thing for me,” says von Ahn, 47. His mother, a doctor and single parent, didn’t earn much, but spent any spare money she had on ensuring von Ahn had access to the best education in Guatemala, he says. “The other kids in my neighborhood probably went to public school. It was very clear that I was years ahead of them in terms of what I was learning, and that always stuck with me,” he says. “And that's probably the biggest reason why we started Duolingo. The idea is to try to give education to everyone, regardless of whether you don't have a lot of money or you have a lot of money, you can use the same system.” Von Ahn believes the app has achieved that goal, and says its users range from across the socioeconomic spectrum.
TIME spoke with von Ahn in May about Duolingo’s story, user engagement, and how he’s approaching AI integration.
We started very small in 2011. We wanted to do something that would give equal access to education to everyone. At first, we didn't want to teach languages. At first, we thought we wanted to teach math, but we decided to teach languages, and the reason for that was because of English. In almost every country in the world, if you know English, you can make more money. There are a little under 2 billion people in the world learning English. Math has a billion people learning it. So English is basically the most learned subject that I know of in the whole world. So we thou
