Luis von Ahn

1997

Luis von Ahn says a computer beat the world chess champion in about 1997.

“you know, a computer beat the world chess champion in something like 1997.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:26:45

2025

Luis von Ahn says Duolingo has never done a layoff and increased its headcount in the year he sent the AI memo.

“we've never done a layoff, we still have never done a layoff. In fact, last year, when I sent that memo, we increased our number of employees, not decreased our number of employees.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:08:33

2025

Luis von Ahn says the initial memo's plan to evaluate every employee on AI usage was wrong, and Duolingo later removed it.

“my initial memo said that we were going to, uh, um, evaluate every employee on their usage of AI. I don't think that was right.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:10:45

2026

Luis von Ahn decided that Duolingo would prioritize user growth over revenue growth in 2026.

“I decided that this year we would really spend it trying to work much more on user growth rather than revenue growth.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:14:51

2026

Duolingo has more than 100 million active users, according to Luis von Ahn.

“At the moment, we have s, you know, north of 100 million active users, which is nice.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:31:35

Undated

Luis von Ahn helped invent CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, word puzzles used for web security.

“you helped invent captcha and then reCAPTCHA, the the security word puzzles that became kind of ubiquitous across the web.”

Bob Safian · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:03:01

Undated

Luis von Ahn was a computer science professor who taught the AI class at Carnegie Mellon University.

“I used to be a computer science professor that actually taught the AI class at Carnegie Mellon University.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:07:55

Undated

Luis von Ahn says about 2 billion people worldwide are learning English, more than any other subject.

“There's about 2 billion people in the world learning English. I don't know of a subject, including math, that has as many people learning it.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:22:32

Undated

Luis von Ahn says chess is Duolingo's newest subject and has gained the most traction outside languages.

“Chess, even though it's our newest subject, has gotten the most traction outside of languages.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:22:05

Undated

Luis von Ahn says an English speaker needs about 500 hours of study to learn Spanish.

“If you wanna learn Spanish and you're an English speaker, you kinda have to put in about 500 hours.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:05:13

Undated

Luis von Ahn says Duolingo has an internal hiring rule that it would rather leave a role unfilled than hire someone unpleasant.

“We have this internal rule that we'd rather have a hole than an a hole.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:30:39

Undated

Luis von Ahn says Duolingo used a limo driver it worked with to report how job candidates treated them, and one candidate was not given an offer partly because of this.

“It wasn't a taxi driver. We would send them like a limo driver that works for us.”

Luis von Ahn · Rapid Response: Duolingo’s battle for learning in an AI world, with Luis von Ahn, 0:30:19