Duolingo is trying to broaden its attain within the music training house with the acquisition of a U.Okay.-based gaming studio.
The tech firm, well-known for its language studying apps and its viral advertising efforts, stated it scooped up the staff behind NextBeat, a London-based music gaming startup that created the Beatstar and Countrystar apps.
Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
By buying the 23-person staff at NextBeat, Duolingo stated it will likely be capable of broaden its efforts behind Duolingo Music, the music studying app it launched in 2023.
Alongside Duolingo Music, the corporate has additionally added choices geared toward Okay-12 districts and colleges, together with Duolingo for Faculties. The free instrument is designed to be aligned to ACTFL and CEFR studying requirements and contains free skilled improvement assets.
The deal can be a “strategic wager on expertise,” Duolingo Chief Enterprise Officer Bob Meese stated in a press release, and can “make our music course and your entire Duolingo platform extra pleasant, immersive, and efficient.”
The acquisition additionally permits the corporate to ascertain its first base of operations within the U.Okay., it stated, since NextBeat’s staff relies in London.
NextBeat CEO Simon Hade stated that the businesses “shared the identical values” and that becoming a member of forces means the NextBeat staff can deliver their skills to “a platform that’s redefining how folks be taught.”
As firms within the ed-tech house race to undertake and deploy AI-powered instruments and merchandise, Duolingo has made headlines by being significantly voracious in its adoption of the expertise.
CEO Luis von Ahn drew backlash in April when he introduced his plans for the corporate to change into “AI-first” and drastically in the reduction of on its human workforce in favor of generative AI instruments.
Buyers appear to look on the work favorably, nonetheless, with the corporate’s inventory worth hovering in current weeks, pushed partly by a Q2 earnings report that beat analysts’ expectations and its elevating of its monetary outlook for the yr.
German ed-tech startup raises €1 million pre-seed spherical. Paddy, an ed-tech startup aiming to deliver an AI-powered trainer assistant instrument to German-speaking nations, stated it raised €1 million in pre-seed funding.
The spherical, led by public-private enterprise capital agency Excessive-Tech Gründerfonds, additionally included participation by the German Federal Ministry for Financial Affairs and Power, KfW Capital, and 45 household workplaces and firms.
The startup launched in January 2025 with the goal of creating it simpler and faster for academics to finish repetitive and mundane duties to allow them to higher have interaction with college students, together with providing instruments to assist work like lesson planning and grading.
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The corporate, based by current college graduates Matty Frommann, Lukas Portmann and Tobias Schröder, reviews having 12,000 energetic customers and is aiming to broaden into the German-speaking DACH area, which incorporates Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
“As a pupil, I witnessed firsthand how a lot strain lots of our academics had been beneath —with hardly any time for particular person assist, regardless that they’d the need,” co-founder and CEO Frommann stated.
Felix Assion, funding supervisor at Excessive-Tech Gründerfonds, stated he was “significantly impressed by the staff,” and was drawn to the startup as its instrument “reveals the way to scale back stress for academics whereas concurrently coaching college students in the usage of AI at an early stage.”
Adoption of Okay-12 ed-tech instruments in Europe remains to be early in comparison with the U.S., Benoit Wirz, a associate at London-based ed-tech enterprise capital agency Brighteye Ventures, advised EdWeek Market Transient final yr.
A U.S. college might have lots of of merchandise and software program packages in use, Wirz stated, whereas a European college might have a handful of custom-build, do-it-all purposes.
“The market remains to be extra nascent in Okay-12 in Europe,” he stated.
The DACH area could also be better-positioned than others within the European market to see development in ed-tech adoption. In accordance with a 2024 report from on-line tutoring supplier GoStudent, 66% of oldsters in Austria and 65% of oldsters in Germany consider that AI is a extremely efficient academic instrument — the very best out of the European nations surveyed and above their total common of 60%.
