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In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company \u201cAI first.\u201d In the memo<\/a>, von Ahn announced that the language-learning platform would track employees\u2019 AI use in performance reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, a year later, von Ahn is backtracking and rethinking how he measures employee performance. He told the Silicon Valley Girl<\/a> podcast earlier this month that Duolingo no longer considers AI use in performance reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n The change arose after employees started to ask, \u201cDo you just want us to use AI for AI\u2019s sake?\u201d von Ahn explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe said no, look \u2014 the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible. A lot of times, AI can help you with that, but if it can\u2019t, I\u2019m not going to force you to do that,\u201d von Ahn said on the podcast.<\/p>\n He felt as though the company was \u201ctrying to push something that in some cases did not fit\u201d instead of \u201cbeing held accountable for the actual outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n The CEO is, however, still sticking to other \u201cconstructive constraints\u201d he introduced in the April 2025 memo, including stopping contractor hiring in cases where AI can assume their workload. The memo sparked online backlash, causing von Ahn to later explain in a LinkedIn post<\/a> that he didn\u2019t believe AI would replace the work his human employees did.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the podcast, von Ahn elaborated on how employees at Duolingo are using AI to become more productive. He said that engineers are leveraging AI tools to help them code new products. Meanwhile, product managers are using AI to make prototypes of apps, which allows for \u201cmuch better decision-making,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Von Ahn also mentioned that a few months ago, Duolingo had a day dedicated to vibe coding, or prompting AI to create an app without manually writing a single line of code. Every single person at the company, from engineers to human resources professionals, had to vibe code an app.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vibe coding has made an impact at the company. One of Duolingo\u2019s latest offerings, a course teaching users how to play chess, arose when two people vibe-coded the first prototype of it, the CEO said. Neither of them knew how to play chess or program, but they managed to use AI to create the whole chess curriculum and a prototype of the app in about six months last year. Now chess is Duolingo\u2019s fastest-growing course, according to von Ahn.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, we have seven million daily active users that are learning chess,\u201d the CEO said on the podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n Von Ahn has led Duolingo for over 15 years and holds a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, according to his LinkedIn<\/a>. Duolingo had a market capitalization of $4.3 billion<\/a> at the time of writing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company \u201cAI first.\u201d In the memo<\/a>, von Ahn announced that the language-learning platform would track employees\u2019 AI use in performance reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, a year later, von Ahn is backtracking and rethinking how he measures employee performance. He told the Silicon Valley Girl<\/a> podcast earlier this month that Duolingo no longer considers AI use in performance reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n The change arose after employees started to ask, \u201cDo you just want us to use AI for AI\u2019s sake?\u201d von Ahn explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow Duolingo uses AI<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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