Duolingo’s CEO said he wants to make the company AI-first and prioritize speed over perfection.
AI will replace contractors, influence hiring, and limit head count growth, the CEO wrote on Monday.
Uber and Shopify CEOs have also said that AI usage is essential at their companies.
Duolingo wants to move fast and break things when it comes to AI.
In a memo to employees shared on LinkedIn, Duolingo’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, outlined his plan to make the company “AI-first.”
“We can’t wait until the technology is 100% perfect,” von Ahn wrote in the memo posted on Monday. “We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment.”
The CEO laid out three ways the company will use the technology. It will “gradually” stop using contractors for tasks AI can do. Employees’ AI use will be judged in hiring and performance reviews. And teams will only get more head count if they cannot automate additional work.
Replacing manual work with AI isn’t a new move for the company. In early 2024, Duolingo laid off 10% of its contract workers because it began using AI to generate content. It made similar AI-related cuts in 2023. In the Monday memo, Von Ahn added that the AI push won’t replace full-time employees with the technology.
“Without AI, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP,” he wrote.
Last year, to highlight its use of AI, Duolingo kicked off one of its earnings calls with a segment from Lily, an AI-driven chatbot based on a purple-haired character on the app.
“Over time, she’s going to do more and more of my job, and I can just retire,” the CEO said at the time.
Duolingo’s stock has risen 68% in the last year, partially on the growth of its paid premium tiers. The company is also diversifying from language offerings by trialing chess and launching music courses. Duolingo is expected to report first-quarter earnings on Thursday.
Von Ahn is the latest tech executive making it clear that AI use is no longer optional.
Earlier this month, Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said not enough of his employees know how to use AI and that Uber is implementing training programs to change that. He added that learning to use AI agents to code is “going to be an absolute necessity at Uber within a year.”
In a memo to employees that Shopify’s Tobias Lütke shared on social media earlier this month, he wrote that AI use is “now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify” and “teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more head count. Von Ahn’s messaging on Monday closely resembled Lütke’s post.
