Duolingo’s stock jumped after a surge in users eager to learn Mandarin, driven by the rise of the RedNote app.
City: New York: Duolingo’s shares shot up nearly 7% on Thursday. This happened because a ton of new users are signing up to learn Mandarin. It’s all linked to the rise of RedNote, a new app that’s giving TikTok a run for its money.
According to Duolingo, there’s been a whopping 216% increase in people learning Mandarin compared to last year. Just to give you an idea, Spanish, which is super popular on the app, only saw a 40% bump in the same time frame.
RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, is now the top free app on the Apple App Store. It’s been holding that spot for most of the week. Other popular apps in the top five include TikTok’s Lemon8, Clapper, ChatGPT, and Meta’s Threads.
Last week, the Supreme Court was discussing TikTok’s future in the U.S. They might decide to ban the app, and it looks like TikTok is getting ready for a possible shutdown this Sunday.
With all this going on, RedNote has really benefited. Its downloads in the U.S. have skyrocketed by 20 times in just a week! A Duolingo rep mentioned that their marketing team is already active on RedNote, which is managed from China.
Duolingo offers courses in 42 languages. They have about 48.8 million Spanish learners and 27.3 million learning French. Mandarin is in eighth place with 10.7 million learners.
Last year, Duolingo’s shares rose by 43%, which is pretty impressive compared to the Nasdaq’s 29% gain.
