Portrait of Luis von Ahn

Rank #3144

Luis von Ahn

Net worth $1.0B

Education technology · United States

Born
Aug 19, 1978
Age
47
Source
Education technology
Residence
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Citizenship
United States
Marital status
Children
0
Education
Ph.D, Carnegie Mellon; Bachelor of Arts/Science, Duke Univeristy

Net worth over time

Biography

  • Luis von Ahn is the cofounder and CEO of popular language-learning app Duolingo.
  • More than 100 million people take language, math and music lessons on Duolingo each month.
  • Von Ahn grew up in Guatemala City with his single mom and grandmother. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1996 to attend Duke, then got a computer science Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon in 2005.
  • While at Carnegie Mellon, he cofounded the CAPTCHA verification system that distinguishes humans from robots online. He sold reCAPTCHA to Google for an undisclosed sum in 2009.
  • Two years later, he started Duolingo, along with cofounder Hacker, a Swiss computer scientist he tapped as the company's CTO.
  • He and Hacker took Duolingo public in 2021. It did nearly $750 million in revenue in 2024.
  • Von Ahn has dual Guatemalan and U.S. citizenship.

Financial assets

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