THE FOUNDER of Duolingo says he backs London as a thriving tech hub, despite concerns about talent gaps.

Speaking with City A.M., Luis von Ahn praised the UK's artifical intelligence capabilities and "really good universities", explaining that the US firm would be looking to grow its team here, which currently sits at four people.

"Thinking about where we'd like to open our offices, London is one of the most attractive places in the world," he told City A.M.

Founded in 2011, the language learning app has 500m active monthly users, which skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic.

Von Ahn explained that the tech firm has been able to retain users because of the "gamification" of its app, which encourages users to keep up a "streak" and reach new levels.

The majority of Duolingo's revenue comes from the seven per cent of its users that pay a monthly subscription to play its language games without ads.

He said the majority of these people come from the US, UK and Japan.

Whilst English is the most learned language on the app globally, different cultural phenonemons drive varying patterns of usage. For instance, von Ahn explained there was a spike in Korean lessons when Squid Game was first released on Netflix. The same happened for Italian when Italy won Eurovision.

"It's strange but whoever wins the World Cup, I guess we're going to see an increase in learning that language too," he said.

(c) 2022 City A.M., source Newspaper