- Duolingo’s Wednesday earnings name began with an AI chatbot demonstration.
- The chatbot, Lily, summarized the corporate’s efficiency this quarter.
Duolingo kicked off its newest investor name on Wednesday with a brand new voice: Lily, a synthetic intelligence-driven chatbot based mostly on a longtime app character.
The purple-haired chatbot, which appeared like a bored, sarcastic teenager, changed CEO Luis von Ahn in the beginning of the video name. Von Ahn later took questions from analysts.
“Over time, she’s going to do an increasing number of of my job, and I can simply retire,” the CEO mentioned.
Speaking in English for lower than two minutes, the chatbot summarized the quarter’s efficiency, together with key metrics like every day energetic customers, which grew 54% 12 months over 12 months to 37.2 million. Lily attributed Duolingo’s sturdy development to social media advertising and marketing and investments in generative AI.
“Our new Duolingo Max characteristic video name lets learners chat with me,” the chatbot mentioned. “Don’t fear, I will not decide — a lot. Maybe simply a watch roll right here and there.”
Lily’s earnings name look is one other occasion of Duolingo’s advertising and marketing technique that positions the model as an individual, not as a enterprise.
The chatbot highlighted the corporate’s efforts to double down on AI. Duolingo makes use of OpenAI’s GPT-4 for two-way interactions and, earlier this 12 months, lower 10% of its contractors as AI, not folks, creates classes.
Several analysts attending the decision acknowledged Lily’s look. Piper Sandler’s Arvind Ramnani mentioned on the decision that it was “in all probability one of the gratifying earnings calls that I had in a number of quarters.”
While Lily was largely a gimmick for the earnings name, the impression of AI has been a persistent theme in earnings this 12 months. Key discussions this quarter embody AI’s artistic use and infrastructure spending for tech giants like Meta and Microsoft.
Another sturdy Duolingo quarter
Duolingo reported $192.6 million in income, which beat analyst expectations of $189.2 million and was a 40% year-on-year enchancment. Duolingo additionally raised full-year 2024 income steering from as much as $738 million to as a lot as $744 million.
However, the corporate missed Wall Street’s expectations on one key metric. It reported 8.6 million paid subscribers, whereas analysts predicted 8.66 million. Duolingo fell almost 5% in after-hours buying and selling following the earnings report.
Its inventory is up over 40% year-to-date, following six straight worthwhile quarters.
The app, a success with Gen Z, is most well-known for its gamified strategy to language studying, the place customers attempt to keep a every day utilization streak. In September, the corporate launched a characteristic the place customers can video name Lily and apply talking with the bot, a part of its costliest pricing tier.
The firm did not instantly reply to a request for remark for this story, despatched exterior enterprise hours.
