Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn was born in 1978 in Guatemala City. In 2000 he received a BS in mathematics, summa cum laude, from Duke University.⁠[1][2]

He studied for a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry under Manuel Blum, earning it in 2005 with the thesis “Human Computation,” which received Carnegie Mellon’s Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2006. From 2005 to 2006 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon’s ALADDIN center.⁠[2][1]

He helped create CAPTCHA, a distorted-text test that people can read but computers struggle to parse, and developed web games that turn image-labeling tasks into competitions to improve online data and study human vision. His research also covered steganography in cryptography.⁠[1]

In 2006 von Ahn became an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and, at 28, was named a MacArthur Fellow.⁠[1][2]

He founded reCAPTCHA and served as its CEO until Google acquired it in 2009; from 2009 to 2011 he was a staff research scientist at Google. Duolingo dates his tenure as reCAPTCHA CEO from 2007, while his CV lists his term as founder and CEO as 2008–2009.⁠[3][2]

In this period he also received a Sloan Fellowship in 2009 and a Packard Fellowship for 2009–2014.⁠[2]

In August 2011 von Ahn and Severin Hacker co-founded the language-learning platform Duolingo; he has served as its CEO and a board member since its founding and is now co-founder, CEO and board chairman. That year he also became the A. Nico Habermann Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.⁠[3][2]

In 2012 he received the ACMAustralian Community MediaAustralian Community Media (ACM) is an Australian regional and rural news publishing group with more than 100 brands, including The Canberra Times; in 2019 Nine sold it to a company controlled by interests associated with Antony Catalano and Thorney Investment Group.Open the full entry Grace Murray Hopper Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).⁠[2]

On August 15, 2017, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry released the a16z Podcast episode “a16z Podcast: The Taxonomy of Collective Knowledge,” featuring von Ahn, founder of reCAPTCHA and Duolingo, and Jay Komarneni, founder of HumanDX, with Andreessen Horowitz’s Vijay Pande and Malinka Walaliyadde.⁠[4]

The episode explored what disease diagnostics, language learning and image recognition have in common: all depend on organizing collective intelligence through data ontologies, which the page says “provide order to how we organize massive amounts of information,” with the discussion ranging from philosophical examples to practical applications in healthcare and diagnosis. It was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019, as “a16z Podcast | The Taxonomy of Collective Knowledge.”⁠[4][5]

On July 27, 2021, Duolingo priced its initial public offering at $102 per share, with the company offering 3,700,000 Class A shares and selling stockholders offering 1,406,113 shares; the stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker DUOL on July 28.⁠[6]

On November 3, 2026, Duolingo released its third-quarter 2026 results, showing year-over-year growth in daily active users accelerating to 29%. Von Ahn said: “This year, we're prioritizing teaching better and user growth, and we're seeing that strategy paying off.”⁠[7]

Duolingo: Official website: https://www.duolingo.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Carnegie Mellon University home page: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

X: Public account: https://x.com/luisvonahn (opens in a new window).⁠[8]