Duolingo is public, but its two co-founders control it: Luis von Ahn holds 40.0% and Severin Hacker 35.8% of the voting power through Class B shares carrying 20 votes each. The largest outside holder is Baillie Gifford with 12.1% of the Class A stock, per the 2026 proxy statement.
Correction (10 Oct 2026): earlier versions of this page showed undated or unsourced ownership figures. Ownership now comes from Duolingo’s Duolingo 2026 proxy statement; the rest of the article is kept as it was.
How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q, prospectus and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number; outside estimates appear only labelled, with their source and date. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
Duolingo has two share classes. Class A shares, held by public investors, carry one vote; Class B shares, held mainly by the founders, carry 20 votes each. Its 2026 proxy statement shows Luis von Ahn with 55.2% of Class B and 40.0% of total voting power, and Severin Hacker with 47.7% of Class B and 35.8% (both percentages include shares they can acquire within 60 days, so the class figures overlap). Outside holders of Class A stock include Baillie Gifford (12.1%), BlackRock (8.5%), FMR (6.8%) and Capital World Investors (5.8%). Directors and officers as a group hold 76.0% of the votes.
The Business Engineer view
Duolingo is a founder-controlled company in the Meta and Alphabet mould: the public owns most of the economics, the founders hold most of the votes. That lets von Ahn and Hacker keep investing in new subjects and AI features without short-term shareholder pressure.
Duolingo is mostly owned and controlled by its co-founders and top executives Luis von Ahn, and Severin Hacker, who have a majority stake in the company which also gives them wide control of it. Other top institutional investors comprise CapitalG, Durable, Baillie Gifford & Co, Vanguard, and Blackrock.
Detail
Description
Company
Duolingo, Inc.
Ownership Structure
Publicly traded company with major shareholders
Major Shareholders
Institutional investors like Vanguard Group, Durable Capital Partners LP, Baillie Gifford & Co., and individual shareholders
Founding Date
November 30, 2011
Founders
Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker
Headquarters
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Primary Business
Providing a language-learning platform and mobile app offering courses in over 40 languages
Strategic Goals
Expanding global reach, enhancing app features through AI and machine learning, growing user engagement, and broadening educational offerings
Additional Ownership Details
Corporate Structure and Ownership: Duolingo, Inc. is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol DUOL. It became publicly traded in July 2021. The company has major institutional shareholders such as Vanguard Group, Durable Capital Partners LP, and Baillie Gifford & Co., among others, which provide significant financial backing and strategic input.
Corporate Strategy and Business Model: Duolingo operates on a freemiummodel, offering free language courses with optional paid subscriptions (Duolingo Plus) for an ad-free experience and additional features. This approach aligns with its mission to make language education accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
Product Innovation and User Engagement: Duolingo invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning to personalize the learning experience, optimize course content, and provide real-time feedback. The app regularly updates with new languages and interactive features, such as gamified learning paths and stories, to keep users engaged.
Global Reach and Market Positioning: Duolingo is one of the most popular language-learning platforms worldwide, with a strong presence in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its user-friendly interface and diverse language offerings make it appealing to a broad audience, including students, professionals, and casual learners.
Educational Expansion: In addition to language courses, Duolingo has expanded into literacy and math education, introducing products like Duolingo ABC for young readers and Duolingo Math. This expansion reflects the companyโs goal to become a comprehensive educational platform.
Community and Inclusivity: Duolingo emphasizes inclusivity and community engagement by supporting minority languages, offering culturally relevant content, and fostering a global community of learners and contributors. This commitment aligns with its broader mission of breaking down language barriers and promoting cross-cultural understanding.
Coursera is an American massive open online course (MOOC) provider founded by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller in 2012. Coursera revenue is categorized according to consumer, enterprise, and degrees. The consumer category accounts for the majority of revenue with multiple studies and course options for individual students looking to upskill.
Duolingo is an EdTech platform leveraging gamification to enable millions of users to learn languages. Duolingo leverages a hybrid between ad-supported and freemium models. Indeed, the free app makes money through advertising. Free users are also channeled into premium subscriptions with an ad-free experience and more features.
Khan Academy is an EdTech non-profitorganization whose mission is โto provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere,โ It runs thanks to the sponsors of various donors that keep the platform developing content at scale for its millions of students across the world.
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Skillshare is an online learning community platform offering educational videos through subscriptions. The idea for the platform came from Michael Karnjanaprakorn, who lamented that his college degrees had no real-world application. Skillshare employs a marketplacemodel of revenue generation. The bulk of its revenue comes from monthly, annual, and enterprise subscriptions. Skillshare also earns referral fees from the related products it shows to consumers on annual subscriptions. Some of these products are high-margin and subscription-based, representing a lucrative income source.
ian game-based learning platform founded in 2012 by Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker, and Morten Versvik. It is based on a university-developed interactive learning game called Lecture Quiz.
Kahoot is free to use for players. Instead, the company makes money by selling access to various adaptations of the game fit for educational or enterprise contexts. Prices depend on the number of game participants and the level of functionality.
Kahoot also makes money by licensing its gaming platform to third-party publishers that want a grow an engaged audience.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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