- Billionaire Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn has a message for his employees: He doesn’t want to lay them off. After receiving backlash this April for a staff memo posted on LinkedIn detailing the company’s “AI-first” strategy, the tech leader clarified that the $16.8 billion language app doesn’t plan to fire full-time staffers. Instead, its contractors will fluctuate based on the company’s needs, while its salaried staffers get more done, thanks to AI.
After Duolingo received backlash for its “AI-first” staff memo posted on LinkedIn this April—conjuring worries of mass layoffs—the company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, is setting the record straight. Now, the executive has doubled down that he doesn’t intend to “lay off humans.”
“This was on me. I did not give enough context,” von Ahn told the New York Times in a recent interview when asked about the controversial memo. “We’ve never laid off any full-time employees. We don’t plan to.”
Just three months ago, the language learning platform with over 100 million users emphasized having to “move with urgency,” outlining a grand plan to achieve the goal of being an “AI-first” company.
The strategy included a gradual reduction in contractors to “do work that AI can handle,” and increasing headcount only if “a team cannot automate more of their work.” Von Ahn insisted that the AI-first memo did not draw scrutiny from Duolingo staffers—but that onlookers were quick to take up arms online.
The tech CEO also added that this change is nothing new: “From the beginning, we’ve had contractors that we use for temporary tasks, and our contractor force has gone up and down depending on needs.”
Von Ahn added that said work will likely change in the next five years because of AI—but again that that doesn’t mean staff cuts at Duolingo.
“What will probably happen is that one person will be able to accomplish more, rather than having fewer people,” he said.
Duolingo has even started encouraging staff to use AI weekly on Fridays—an activity he called “F-r-A-I-days.” During that time, Duolingo teams are allowed to “experiment on how to get more efficient in using AI,” von Ahn added.
AI displacement in the workplace
Duolingo isn’t the only company trimming its outsourced and contractor roles as AI takes over routine work. In mid-July, ScaleAI laid off approximately 500 contractors—more than double the 200 full-time staffers who were let go.
According to MIT’s State of AI in Business 2025 report, AI is primarily displacing offshore roles, not domestic full-time jobs. According to the report, automating outsourcing has a $2 million to $10 million return on investment.
And while 3% of jobs could currently be replaced by AI, MIT told Axios that that figure could rise to nearly a third of all jobs in the longer term.
Though Duolingo insists it won’t cut full-timers, not every tech company has taken that approach. Enterprise software powerhouse IgniteTech laid off 80% of its staff because they weren’t adapting to AI fast enough—and its CEO says he’d do it again today.
“In early 2023, we saw the light,” IgniteTech CEO Eric Vaughan told Coins2Day, adding that he believed every tech company was facing a crucial inflection point around adoption of artificial intelligence. “Now, I’ve certainly morphed to believe that this is every company, and I mean that literally every company, is facing an existential threat by this transformation.”