US-based language learning app developer Duolingo has filed for an initial public offering yesterday that would enable internet and technology conglomerate Alphabet to exit.
The offering is slated to take place on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and the company has set a $100m placeholder target.
Duolingo has developed a mobile app with 40 million monthly active users that helps them learn any one of up to 40 languages. It was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2009 and made a $15.8m net loss during 2020 while more than doubling revenue to almost $162m.
The company had raised a total of $183m as of November 2020, when it secured $35m from investment management firm Durable Capital Partners and growth equity firm General Atlantic at $2.4bn valuation, with Union Square Ventures (USV) selling shares through the deal.
Alphabet’s CapitalG unit had supplied $30m in series F funding for Duolingo in a late 2019 transaction valuing it at $1.5bn, two years after it received $25m in a series E round led by Drive Capital at a $700m valuation.
CapitalG (then Google Capital) had already led the company’s $45m series D round in 2015, investing alongside existing backers USV, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Ashton Kutcher and Tim Ferris.
Duolingo’s largest shareholder is NewView Capital Partners, the venture capital firm spun off from NEA, which owns 20.1% of its class B shares, followed by USV (14.2%), CapitalG (13.7%), KPCB (10.5%) and General Atlantic (7.1%).
Goldman Sachs and Allen & Company are lead bookrunners for the IPO, BofA Securities, Barclays Capital, Evercore Group and William Blair are also bookrunners while KeyBanc Capital Markets, JMP Securities, Piper Sandler and Raymond James are co-managers.
