Inside Duolingo’s Controversial ‘AI-First’ Strategy

Summary

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WSJ Tech News Briefing

Episode Title: Inside Duolingo’s Controversial ‘AI-First’ Strategy
Date: September 23, 2025
Host: Katie Dayton (WSJ)
Featured Guest: Severin Hacker, Chief Technology Officer, Duolingo
Interviewer: Bell Lin, WSJ Leadership Institute

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Brief Overview

This episode dives into two major topics: first, the shockwaves in the tech industry following a Trump administration overhaul of the H1B visa program; and second, an in-depth conversation with Duolingo’s CTO Severin Hacker about the company’s controversial "AI-first" strategy, its internal and external fallout, and what the future of AI-powered language learning could look like.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. H1B Visa Overhaul and Tech Industry Fallout (00:34–05:13)

• Context:
  The Trump administration introduced a sweeping change to the H1B visa process—adding a steep $100,000 application fee for new visas, stoking uncertainty and chaos among tech workers and companies.
• Impact:
  • Companies Most Affected: Major tech firms like Amazon, Google, Tesla, and especially smaller startups relying on skilled foreign talent.
  • Employee Scramble: Reports emerged of frantic flights back to the US, hurried meetings, and personal sacrifices (“Do I gamble my career or risk missing family emergencies?”).
• Clarification & Remaining Concerns:
  • The fee applies only to new visas, not renewals or current holders.
  • The $100,000 is a one-time fee.
  • Uncertainty remains, especially for smaller tech companies unable to shoulder the cost.
• Long-term Concerns:
  • The policy may create a “haves and have-nots” dynamic: “Are tech companies going to just say we'll only pay for certain stars and the rest will just figure out how to hire a US worker or outsource some other way?” (Ray Smith, 04:41)

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2. Inside Duolingo’s “AI-First” Company Pivot (06:05–11:26)

A. The Origin of Duolingo’s AI-First Memo and the Backlash

• The Memo’s Fallout:
  The CEO’s company-wide “AI First” memo sparked controversy, with staff and users worrying about potential layoffs and the loss of human influence in language education.

  • “[The] memo… was controversial because of its perceived stance on favoring AI instead of humans.” (Bell Lin, 06:31)

• CTO Severin Hacker’s Response:

  • Duolingo’s mission is to make high-quality education universally available.
  • The AI revolution (especially with tools like GPT-4) represents “a massive, massive opportunity for us.”
  • Human one-on-one tutoring is the gold standard for learning, but it's expensive; AI can democratize that level of quality at dramatically reduced costs.
  • “If we all had infinite resources, that’s how we would learn…and now, for the first time with AI, we believe we can achieve our mission.” (Severin Hacker, 07:19)

B. What Does “AI-First” Mean in Practice?

• Definition & Vision:
  • Most companies use AI for productivity and support, but Duolingo aims to use AI to build entirely new products that simply weren’t possible before.
  • Analogy: The shift from just having a mobile companion app to building something that couldn’t exist without smartphones—like Uber.
  • “What is the product that you couldn't have built before AI?” (Severin Hacker, 09:13)

C. Implementation: New AI Features at Duolingo

• Example Feature:
  • "Video Call with Lily": An AI-powered conversation partner, now in major languages, for natural language practice.
  • “We have this feature with the Call with Lily and you can talk to her… a feature we couldn’t have built before AI. We actually tried and it didn’t work, but now you can actually build it.” (Severin Hacker, 09:49)
• User Adoption:
  • The feature has seen “tremendous uptake.”

D. The Broader Vision: AI’s Role in Human Learning

• AI as a Tutor—not a Replacement:
  • Hacker tempers fears about AI replacing human jobs, emphasizing its role in delivering individualized, high-quality instruction.
  • On the future of instant learning:
    • “Maybe I’m dating myself, but there [in The Matrix] they basically just download… whatever into the brain… I think that’s a little bit far out in the future, but it’s never been more realistic for Duolingo.” (Severin Hacker, 10:45)
• AI’s Impact on Scale:
  • Use of AI enabled Duolingo to launch over 100 courses in a single year—something that would have “taken us tens or maybe even 100 years if not for AI.” (Severin Hacker, 11:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the existential risk and opportunity for Duolingo:
  "If you want to learn anything...the single best way to learn is with a one on one human tutorial...now for the first time with AI, we believe we can achieve our mission..."
  — Severin Hacker, CTO, Duolingo (07:19)

• On what it means to be AI-first:
  "What is the Uber? What is the product that you couldn't have built before AI?"
  — Severin Hacker, CTO, Duolingo (09:13)

• On scaling innovation:
  "We launched over 100 courses this year. And this is thanks to AI. Previously would have taken us tens or maybe even 100 years if not for AI."
  — Severin Hacker, CTO, Duolingo (11:12)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:34–05:13 — H1B visa overhaul, its rationale, impact, and lingering tech industry concerns
• 06:05–06:55 — Introduction to Duolingo’s AI-First strategy & initial backlash
• 06:55–08:23 — Duolingo’s mission, reasoning for pivoting to AI
• 08:23–09:34 — Definition of “AI-First” and transformative analogy to mobile’s impact
• 09:34–10:12 — Implementation: AI-driven features like “Video Call with Lily”
• 10:12–11:26 — Big-picture vision: AI as personalized tutor and agent of rapid scaling

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Tone & Style

• The conversation mixes direct corporate insight from Duolingo’s leadership with balanced, journalistic inquiry from WSJ.
• The tone is forward-looking and pragmatic, neither utopian nor alarmist about AI’s role in education.
• The episode conveys both excitement about innovation and sensitivity to staff/user concerns.

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Summary Takeaway

Duolingo’s bold “AI-first” strategy aims far beyond operational efficiency: it seeks to fundamentally reshape how language (and potentially all) learning happens at scale. By leveraging AI to mimic one-on-one tutoring and dramatically accelerate course creation, Duolingo hopes to fulfill its mission of universal access to top-tier education—while also addressing fears about what increased automation means for employees and users. The episode offers a candid look at both the possibilities and anxieties of AI transformation inside a well-known tech platform.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, September 23rd. I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall Street Journal. Changes to an employment visa that's popular among tech companies have rattled the industry, leading to frantic phone calls, legal briefings, and last minute flights back to the US we dive into what happened when Trump overhauled the H1B and ask what comes next. Then we catch up with Duolingo, the language learning app that's navigating the waters of investing in AI without aggravating its human staff and users. But first, President Trump rocked the tech world late last week with a sweep of changes to the H1B visa, a program that allows American firms to hire highly skilled foreign workers. The visa has become popular among tech companies, many of which went into crisis mode when the Trump administration said it would add a new fee to H1B applications. Our reporter Ray Smith spent the weekend reporting the story. So, Ray, what reasons did Trump give for making these sweeping changes to the H1B?

[C]

One of the reasons is they felt that this was an unfair system to US Workers. The idea was that we have people coming into this country, basically American jobs away from highly skilled Americans. And that was the premise behind why they feel like they need to crack down on a system that they believe was being used by tech companies to avoid hiring American workers.

[B]

Can you explain which kinds of companies are affected most by these changes?

[C]

It's primarily tech companies. Amazon, Google and Tesla are among the biggest users of these visas, and these visas let companies bring foreign workers to the US On a temporary basis. These workers, overwhelmingly they come from India and they fill jobs in fields such as like software development, computer science, and engineering. So it's a lot of tech jobs and it's especially young, skilled people coming in from India.

[B]

Can you talk me through some of the anecdotes you heard from the tech industry over the weekend? What did their scramble patterns look like?

[C]

In some cases we heard of people being instructed by their companies like they might have been in meetings, and they were told to rush those meetings and make sure they get a flight back to the US before the deadline. I talked with an immigration attorney, she represents tech workers and she had a client that was actually on an international cruise. And so there was no way they were going to be able to make it back to the US in time before the deadline. Some of the other things we heard were people who had difficulty booking flights to the US because this was last minute. So we heard of some people having to think about whether they should fly into Guam or Hawaii to try to get here before the deadline. And then a colleague of mine talked with someone who had Even after he got the clarification, he still was a little bit uneasy about leaving the country. His H1B status doesn't go into effect for several weeks. He still wouldn't risk traveling to visit his family in India. His mother has heart problems. You know, he fears needing to choose between the career he spent years building and being with his family should an emergency occur. So it's just these heartrending situations of people just being in limbo about what they should do, what they can do.

[B]

And now we have a little bit more of a clarification. What as of now, we're recording this on Monday afternoon, are the new restrictions on the H1B.

[C]

So it appears that it doesn't apply to every single H1B visa holder. What the White House said on Saturday was that the changes only apply to new visas and not renewals, current visa holders, or 2025 lottery winners. So it doesn't affect the ability of existing visa holders to travel back and forth. And they also clarified that the $100,000 fee is a one time fee, not an annual fee. But we're not sure if it's totally.

[B]

Resolved from what you've heard from your sources. How is the tech world anticipating this will change hiring practices and the overall makeup of their staff in the long.

[C]

Run, it's raising some really big questions for companies, especially for startups and smaller companies, because they don't have the resources like say Microsoft does to pay this $100,000 for each employee. And so there are questions about how is this going to affect their hiring and will it lead to this have or have nots? Are tech companies going to just say we'll only pay for certain stars and then the rest will just figure out how to hire a US worker or outsource some other way?

[B]

That was WSJ reporter Ray Smith. Coming up, we take a look at how Duolingo's promise to become an AI first company is playing out. That's after the break.

[A]

At the moment, AI can help you search for business advice, but it can't step in to help if things take a bad turn, but how about quickly finding an AI expert who can? Siemens xcelerator ecosystem helps you connect with top industrial AI providers and find innovative solutions from a single trusted source. That's AI for real. From the global market leader in industrial AI, Siemens. Learn more on USA.Siemens.com AI.

[B]

Duolingo made its name as the language learning app with a chaotic green owl for a mascot, but it generated controversy earlier this year after its CEO sent staff an email calling for the company to become AI First. The WSJ Leadership Institute's Bell Lin spoke to Duolingo's Chief technology Officer, Severin Hacker, about the fallout from the memo's publication on stage at the recent WSJ Technology Council summit.

[D]

The memo it was controversial because of its perceived stance on favoring AI instead of humans. And you've since faced backlash from customers who question whether there might be layoffs at Duolingo. And if a company focused on teaching people languages could function with fewer people on board. So let's start there. What happened? What do you think went wrong?

[E]

Our mission is to provide the best education and make it universally available. We started with languages because it's one of the few subjects that people learn both inside and outside of schools and we didn't want to deal with schools from day one. So that's why I start with languages. That's the mission of the company now. When we saw the AI revolution with GPT4, we saw this is massive, massive opportunity for us. And let me explain why. So if you want to learn anything, whether it's jazz, golf, languages, math, music, the single best way to learn is with a one on one human tutorial. If we all had infinite resources, that's how we would learn. And that's in fact how people used to learn in the past when they had infinite resources like kings and royalty, they would hire personal one on one tutor for their kids. And the reason we don't have that is because it's so expensive. And now for the first time with AI, we believe we can achieve our mission because AI could allow us to teach as well as a one on one tutor, but at the cost of AI, which is much, much, much, much lower than a human tutor. So that's the main reason why we wrote the memo. And we see this as a massive, massive opportunity to teach better and everything else followed from that.

[D]

So let's talk about AI first. Can you define what that means? Especially as a founder and as a CTO operator in practice and in reality, what does it really mean?

[E]

The big question is, how can you use AI to teach better? A lot of people ask, how can we use AI to be more productive? Or everybody should use ChatGPT and AI, note takers, et cetera. I think that's all good and fine, and we obviously do that as well. At Duolingo, we use cursor and AI for development, software, engineering, et cetera. I'm very close to that. But I think you're missing the point. If you don't use AI to build new products, like, what can you build now that you previously couldn't build? So just to give you an analogy, when mobile happened at first, every, you know, every restaurant, every website built a mobile app. And that was not mobile first. Really, it was just like, oh, yeah, now we have a companion app for our service or product or whatever. But then at some point, we had Uber. And Uber was something that you couldn't have built before the smartphone. And I think that's what I'm interested in. And I think that's what your company should think about is like, what is the Uber? What is the product that you couldn't have built before AI?

[D]

How are you actually putting that into practice? Are there new AI features that your users have latched onto? How are you actually building AI into Duolingo?

[E]

The feature we're most proud of or most excited about is this feature called Video Call with Lily. So if you have used Duolingo in the major languages, we have this feature with the Call with Lily and you can talk to her. And the vision there is to make her the best possible conversation partner. So as part of learning a language, you have to practice conversation. And it's again, a feature that we couldn't have built before AI. We actually tried and it didn't work, but now you can actually build it, and we see tremendous uptake on that feature.

[D]

How do you push the boundary in terms of you talked about back in the day, kings and queens could have their own personal tutor. Is the idea that Duolingo becomes the ChatGPT AI tutor that pushes even further into what people can learn. How do you continue to evolve how the product works?

[E]

People say, okay, AI is going to replace humans, et cetera, et cetera. And that's obviously a negative. And I actually don't think that's going to happen or not nearly as fast as people think. But on the positive side, AI is also really good at teaching you things. We could get into a world where, if you guys remember Matrix, maybe I'm dating myself. But there they basically just download the Qiuchtsu or whatever into the brain. So it's like instantly 10 seconds, you know, now you know the skill, now you know languages. So I think that's probably a little bit far out in the future, but it's never been more realistic for Duolingo. Right now, really, the focus is on teaching better, teaching more. So, you know, we have been able to expand our courses by a lot. So we launched over 100 courses this year. And this is thanks to AI. Previously would have taken us tens or maybe even 100 years if not for AI.

[B]

That was the WSJ Leadership Institute's Berlin speaking to Duolingo's Chief Technology Officer Severin Hacker, at the recent WSJ Technology Council Summit. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with Deputy Editor Chris Sinsley and supervising producer Melanie Royce. Hi, I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TMB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

[A]

At the moment, AI can help you search for business advice, but it can't step in to help if things take a bad turn. But how about quickly finding an AI expert who can? Siemens Accelerator Ecosystem helps you connect with top industrial AI providers and find innovative solutions from a single trusted source. That's AI for real. From the global market leader in industrial AI, Siemens. Learn more on USA.Siemens.com AI.