Flying: Duolingo's active users keep soaring

2/10/24 7:00PM

Baby bird

‍If you’ve ever been annoyed at having to prove you’re not a robot on a website, and you’ve been irritated by a Duolingo notification to get back to your lessons, you can direct your frustrations toward Luis von Ahn, a Guatemalan entrepreneur behind both. Having sold his online authentication software idea reCAPTCHA to Google for “somewhere between $10m and $100m” in 2009, von Ahn teamed up with one of his PhD students, the aptly-named Severin Hacker, to take on the world of education. Deciding they wanted to make language learning affordable, the pair founded Duolingo in 2011, drumming up $3.3m in funding from investors such as Tim Ferriss and Ashton Kutcher.

The platform didn’t launch to the public until June 2012, but ever since the app has soared in popularity, becoming the center of the modern language-learning universe. By leaning into bite-sized lessons, users are hooked in their millions into starting what is otherwise a daunting prospect: learning to speak, write, and maybe even think, in another language.

Saying the right words

‍After its launch, Duolingo picked up traction quickly, nudging towards the top end of the highly-competitive education charts on app stores. By 2014, the company closed a $20 million Series C round, having picked up 25 million registered users. Fast forward a decade, and those milestones look almost petite, with registered users growing to over 500 million by the end of 2020, when we all had newfound time to pursue long-postponed goals for self-betterment.

But, even more impressive, perhaps, is the share of ‘Lingo heads who use the app regularly, with 83 million people actively choosing to reckon with reflexive verbs at least once a month, and more than 24 million doing the same every day, per the company’s latest figures. So, how did Duolingo win in a space that’s so competitive? They made learning fun… and addictive.

Jon Keegan2/13/26

Ahead of IPO, Anthropic adds veteran executive and former Trump administration official to board

Anthropic is moving to put the pieces in place for a successful IPO this year.

Today, the company announced that Chris Liddel would join its board of directors.

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Ties to the Trump world could be helpful for Anthropic as it pushes to enter the public market. It’s reportedly not on the greatest terms with the current administration, as the startup has pushed back on using its Claude AI for surveillance applications.

Exclusive | Anthropic Adds New Board Member as It Eyes IPO

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Rani Molla2/13/26

Meta is bringing back facial recognition for its smart glasses

Meta is reviving its highly controversial facial recognition efforts, with plans to incorporate the tech into its smart glasses as soon as this year, The New York Times reports.

In 2021, around the time Facebook rebranded as Meta, the company shut down the facial recognition software it had used to tag people in photos, saying it needed to “find the right balance.”

Now, according to an internal memo reviewed by the Times, Meta seems to feel that it’s at least found the right moment, noting that the fraught and crowded political climate could allow the feature to attract less scrutiny.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Tom Jones

the elder scrolls

2/13/26

Older Americans are spending more time on their phones than younger cohorts, per new data

Some members of the TikTok generation are (very slightly) less glued to their phones than other adults, it turns out.

A man, a woman and a child with a phone instead of a head

Rani Molla

2/13/26

Apple doesn’t have an AI spending problem. It has an AI execution problem.

Apple isn’t falling far from the AI tree.

Super Bowl LX: New England Patriots v Seattle Seahawks

Jon Keegan2/12/26

Anthropic raises $30 billion, now valued at $380 billion

Anthropic is now valued at $380 billion, after closing on its latest round of fundraising, taking in $30 billion from a wide range of investors. The Series G round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and the UAE’s investment arm, MGX.

Some other investors include: Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, JPMorgan Chase, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

Anthropic offered a few details on the current state of its business:

Anthropic said that its annual run-rate revenue has reached $14 billion, seeing 10x growth each of the past three years.
“The number of customers spending over $100,000 annually on Claude (as represented by run-rate revenue) has grown 7x in the past year.”
“Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026.”
Business subscriptions to Claude Code have quadrupled since the start of 2026.

In a blog post announcing the round, the company said:

“We train and run Claude on a diversified range of AI hardware — AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and NVIDIA GPUs — which means we can match workloads to the chips best suited for them. This diversity of platforms translates to better performance and greater resilience for the enterprise customers that depend on Claude for critical work.”

Anthropic raises $30 billion in Series G funding at $380 billion post-money valuation