Duolingo Stock Heads For Worst Day In Months As CEO Flags Slower Growth — Retail Calls Selloff ‘Stupid’

As the company focuses on growing its user base, Duolingo expects to have an impact in the short term, mainly on its profitability.

• The company’s quarterly revenue rose 35% to $282.9 million, compared with Wall Street expectations of $276 million, according to data from Fiscal AI.
• Duolingo said that it expects fiscal 2026 bookings to grow 10% to 12% year over year and first-quarter bookings to rise nearly 11%.
• The company’s total bookings increased by 24% year over year, reflecting continued subscriber growth and healthy conversion rates.

Duolingo, Inc. will see slower bookings growth and lower profitability in the near term, CEO Luis von Ahn said, as the language-learning platform prioritizes user growth and expands its artificial intelligence-based offerings. Shares fell more than 21% in after-hours trading following the comments. Retail traders, however, are dismissing the selloff as overdone.

He said there was a “huge opportunity ahead” for Duolingo, and the most important thing for the company right now was to continue attracting users. “Another way of seeing it is that long-term value in this business is driven by two things: the size of our active learner base, that's like the size of the pie, and how effectively we monetize that base, you can think of that as the piece of the pie,” von Ahn said.

“At this moment, we are prioritizing growing the size of the pie … we have a carefully considered plan for 2026 that focuses on teaching better and user growth,” he said during a post-earnings call.

Duolingo stock is set to snap a three-day gaining streak and is heading for its worst day since early November, if momentum holds during Friday’s trading. The company's shares have tumbled nearly 34% so far this year.

Duolingo’s Q4 Results Beat

The company’s quarterly revenue rose 35% to $282.9 million, compared with Wall Street expectations of $276 million, according to data from Fiscal AI. Duolingo said that fourth-quarter net income was $42 million, and gross margin expanded nearly 90 basis points year over year to 72.8%.

“This improvement was primarily driven by increasing subscription margins and a greater mix of revenue coming from subscriptions,” von Ahn said. The daily active users for the quarter grew 30% year-over-year, despite lapping 51% growth in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Duolingo’s total bookings increased 24% year over year, reflecting continued subscriber growth and healthy conversion, it said.

Duolingo’s 2026 In A Nutshell

The company said that it expects fiscal 2026 bookings to grow 10% to 12% year over year and first-quarter bookings to rise nearly 11%. Duolingo expects annual revenue to jump 15% to 18% while first-quarter revenue is expected to increase 25%.

Duolingo noted that for the second quarter, it expects the bookings growth rate to be slightly lower than three points when compared to the first quarter before rising in the second half of 2026, assuming modest early returns from our investments.

The New Strategy

von Ahn said that daily active users decelerated throughout 2025, and the company expects the segment growth in 2026 to be about 20%. “Some of this deceleration is natural as we scale, and some of it, we believe, is a function of our increased focus on monetization in recent years,” he said.

The CEO noted that the company would focus on AI-based transformation through Video Call, which would be part of the Super Duolingo tier, and experiment with changes to its top subscription tier, Duolingo Max. “This will give access to a critical learning feature, conversation practice, to about ten times as many learners,” he said.

The company said that it would focus on more speaking practice for all learners, free and paid, by allowing them to answer most exercises with voice input instead of tapping or typing, and it would also invest in advanced content so that all our courses teach the nine most widely learned languages. Von Ahn added that it would also work on its Chess, Math, and Music subjects to feed them as the next growth engines for user growth.

How Are Stocktwits Users Reacting?

Retail sentiment on Duolingo jumped to ‘extremely bullish’ from ‘bearish’ territory compared to a day ago, with message volumes at ‘extremely high’ levels, according to data from Stocktwits.

A bullish user on Stocktwits noted that the current stock “selloff is stupid” and that the CEO is working on the best strategy for the company that will benefit investors.

Another bullish user on Stocktwits said that Duolingo was an “undervalued company” and that the stock should jump on Friday.

Shares of Duolingo have declined more than 62% in the last 12 months.

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