Don’t Fade Duolingo

People underestimate the scale of what’s quietly becoming the Amazon of knowledge.

This isn’t a deep dive into Duolingo. I’m not here to dissect revenue figures or margins from the last quarterly. Sometimes its best to zoom out. This is a qualitative note that the market is underestimating Duolingo’s long-term potential.

I’m long Duolingo $DUOL because I see its addressable market as continually expanding and its opportunity vast. The product is constantly evolving — learning from its own users and improving through data-driven iteration. What Duolingo looks like today will be unrecognizable in five or ten years. It will be doing things we can’t imagine yet.

I actually like hearing other investors say, “Why learn a language when I can just use AI on my phone?” It tells me they’re missing the point entirely. I like investing in something that seems obvious to me, but the larger market doesn’t get.

You don’t need to learn a language anymore—especially if you speak English. Most people you meet abroad will adapt, and yes, you could just use Google Translate for a back-and-forth conversation—but in 29 countries, I’ve never seen anyone actually do that. People find ways to connect. Learning a few local phrases still goes a long way.

Those learning a language today do it out of curiosity, love, or necessity—not obligation. Thinking Duolingo can be replaced by an AI app misses what makes us human.

We have an innate thirst for knowledge. We want to achieve—to learn a new language, sharpen our math skills, master chess, play an instrument, explore history, understand other cultures. Our curiosity has no limits.

Believing Duolingo will remain just a language app is like believing in 1996 that Amazon would remain just an online bookshop.

Most Duolingo users don’t need to learn—they want to. They enjoy it. Duolingo taps into that basic human drive for knowledge, with an even bigger opportunity ahead: helping fix broken education systems worldwide.

Duolingo is still very early in its story. Like Spotify for music, Netflix for video, or Booking.com for travel, it’s becoming the central facilitator and value-adder for millions. Let’s look at some of the monthly active user figures for these brands;

Booking.com: 135 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) estimated

Netflix: 284 million paid subscribers

Spotify: 696 million MAUs (276 million paid)

Instagram: 3 billion MAUs

Each of these apps was doubted—sometimes even mocked—in its early days. They offered ways to do things people could already do: book a hotel, watch a movie, listen to music, look at photos. But they kept iterating, improving the experience for millions, and eventually billions, of people around the world.

Duolingo currently has 128 million MAUs (11 million of which are paying). For many investors, it’s still in the very early, “yeah right, not gonna happen” stage of its life cycle, just like Netflix and Spotify were in their niches a decade ago. But what began as a language app will evolve into a global learning engine — the Amazon of knowledge. Duolingo can teach not only languages, but any subject that can be broken down into engaging, bite-sized lessons. The potential verticals are immense—languages, chess, math, music, history, geography, programming and more—each available in dozens of languages. Its total addressable market is; anyone, at any age, anywhere, learning anything, for any reason.

We believe our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available is more attainable than ever.

Luis von Ahn, Duolingo CEO and Co-Founder

Human nature is driven by curiosity, and the desire for challenge and growth. Duolingo is building the digital infrastructure for that instinct — a platform designed to scale to hundreds of millions, and eventually billions, of lifelong casual or serious learners. It will facilitate that process in part or in full — sparking curiosity, sustaining motivation, and accompanying people on their journey for knowledge.

To some, Duolingo looks like a language app waiting to be disrupted by AI. In reality, it’s another case of a transformative business hiding in plain sight, its ambitions dismissed as fanciful.

Don’t fade Duolingo.

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