Luis von Ahn

Luis von Ahn is an entrepreneur and former professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing, he is known for coinventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur fellow, and selling two companies to Google in his 20s. Von Ahn is currently the cofounder and CEO of Duolingo, the most popular language-learning platform and most downloaded education app in the world. Duolingo’s mission is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.

Von Ahn has been named one of the “10 Most Brilliant Scientists” by Popular Science Magazine, one of the “50 Best Brains in Science” by Discover, one of the  “35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT Technology Review, and  and one of the “100 Most Innovative People in Business” by Fast Company Magazine. In 2018, von Ahn won the Lemelson-MIT Prize and in 2023, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.