Duolingo Raises $10M in a Quiet Transaction

Pennsylvania-based edtech platform Duolingo raised $10 million in venture capital from General Atlantic, as per an SEC filing. General Atlantic will take a board observer seat, as per the language learning platform.

In December 2019, Duolingo became a unicorn with a valuation of $1.5 billion after raising $30 Million in a Series F funding round led by CapitalG. The platform?s valuation after the current investment round is unknown.

As per Duolingo, the aim for this round of investment is to get a new investor on board. General Atlantic is the first outside investor accepted by language learning in about three years. The platform expects to gain from General Atlantic?s experience with online education in Asia. This aligns with Duolingo?s plan to scale up the Duolingo English test platform.

Besides the $10 million investment, it’s reported that there was a secondary transaction in which an existing investor in Duolingo sold a small portion of their stake in the language platform to allow General Atlantic to have a bigger stake in the company. The size of the secondary transaction is unknown.

Other edtech companies in which General Atlantic has invested are Unacademy,  OpenClassrooms, and Ruangguru.

As per a statement reported in TechCrunch, Duolingo said, ?Because our business has been growing very fast and we have more than enough capital, there was limited need for us to raise more primary capital. However, over the last year, we developed a relationship with General Atlantic.?

Commenting on the investment, Tanzeen Syed, a managing director for General Atlantic, said that Duolingo is a ?market leader in the language learning space.” and has a ?profitable, efficient business model while maintaining hyper-growth characteristics.?

Duolingo recently launched a new app to enable children to learn to read and write, and it also crossed one million paid subscribers on Duolingo Plus app.

Stay tuned for more edtech news.

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