Duolingo rival Preply bags €62.4M from Horizon Capital, others to expand AI-powered language learning platform

Ukraine-born and currently US-based Preply, an online language learning marketplace that connects tutors to learners, announced on Wednesday, July 19, that it has raised $70M (approximately €62.4M) in a fresh round of funding. 

The company raised the funds by issuing new equity and debt, reports CNBC. The equity portion was led by Horizon Capital with backing from Reach Capital, Hoxton Ventures, and others, reports CNBC.  

The announcement comes a year after raising €49.87M in a Series C round of funding led by Silicon Valley-based Owl Ventures in July 2022. To date, the company has raised $170M in funding. 

Kirill Bigai, co-founder and CEO of Preply, states that the company intends to employ the funds to expand its dominance in the online language learning category by leveraging AI-powered human tutors. 

He emphasised that this approach would offer a transformative learning experience, which was rapidly emerging as a pivotal factor in the industry.

Preply has revealed its utilisation of machine learning to enhance the pairing of learners with suitable tutors. Presently, the platform is taking a step further by integrating additional AI capabilities. 

Recently, the company introduced an AI assistant designed to assist tutors in generating exercises, providing grammar explanations, and suggesting conversation starters.

Preply: Online learning platform

Founded in 2012 by Dmytro Voloshyn, Kirill Bigai, and Serge Lukianov, Preply is an online learning platform that connects more than 40,000 tutors teaching 50 languages to learners in 180 countries worldwide.

The company uses a machine-learning algorithm to efficiently pair tutors with learners anywhere in the world, making smarter connections, and ‘cracking the code of effective language learning’.

For example, if you’re in London and you want to learn any new or foreign language, you can easily find a language expert at a time and price point that’s convenient for you. 

The company says that most of the learners skip live teaching as they prefer taking classes before or after work, meaning that there would only be a handful of slots or tutors available at that odd/particular time. This is what the edtech startup is working towards solving – the “rush hour challenge”.

The company has over 400 employees of 58 different nationalities. Preply says it is a US company with employees based in 30 countries across Europe, the US, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.