ai-language-learning
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Mariano Sorgente Wants You to Learn by Talking
After building blockchain infrastructure and investing at a16z crypto, the Stanford-trained engineer returned to the builder’s seat with ISSEN - a voice tutor born from years of learning Japanese the hard way.
Praktika.ai
Praktika.ai is an AI-powered language learning app that lets people practice speaking through conversations with personalized AI avatar tutors. Instead of the tap-and-match drills common to language apps, Praktika simulates the responsive, spoken back-and-forth of a private tutor - complete with realistic voices, accents and emotional inflection - at roughly $8 a month versus hundreds for a human tutor. Founded by the team behind AI service firm Cleverbots, the company reports over 30 million learners, 1.2 million monthly active users across 100 countries, and raised a $35.5M Series A led by Blossom Capital in May 2024.
Vu Van
Vu Van is the Vietnamese-born co-founder and CEO of ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant), an AI-powered app that gives non-native speakers instant feedback on English pronunciation, fluency and intonation. She built the idea out of her own struggle to be understood as a Stanford graduate student, teamed up with speech-recognition scientist Xavier Anguera, and has grown ELSA into one of the world's largest AI language platforms, with tens of millions of users across roughly 190 countries. She is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and Endeavor entrepreneur.
Babbel
Babbel is a Berlin-based language learning company that teaches 14 languages through short, expert-designed lessons built for real-life conversation. Founded in 2007 and operated under the legal name Lesson Nine GmbH, it pioneered the paid subscription model for language apps and has sold tens of millions of subscriptions worldwide. Its lessons - typically 10 to 15 minutes - are written by linguists rather than crowdsourced or generated, and the company has layered in speech recognition and AI speaking practice while keeping human-designed pedagogy at the center.
Liulishuo
Liulishuo (LAIX Inc.) is a Shanghai-based educational technology company that uses artificial intelligence to teach English. Its flagship app, 'English Liulishuo' (known internationally as LingoChamp), pairs proprietary speech-recognition and deep-learning models with an adaptive curriculum to act as a personal 'AI English Teacher.' Founded in 2012 by three engineers with Google and academic backgrounds, the company grew to tens of millions of registered users and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018.