Duolingo shares climb 7% as users swarm to app to learn Mandarin

Duolingo Shares rose nearly 7% on Thursday after a big spike in users signing up to learn Mandarin in conjunction with growing use of the Chinese social media app. RedNotethe rival of TikTok.

The company confirmed to CNBC that there was a 216% increase in Mandarin students using the app compared to a year earlier. For context, Spanish, one of the app’s most popular languages, saw a 40% increase in the same period, Duolingo said.

RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, as it is known in China, has managed to become the No. 1 free app in the Apple app store, a position that has been held for most of this week. Rounding out the top five are TikTok’s Lemon8 app, US social media arrival Clapper, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and of Meta The threads.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case involving the future of TikTok in the United States, and a law that could effectively banning the popular app. The judges seemed in favor of keeping the law, and a decision could come as soon as Friday. TikTok is reported prepare for a US shutdown on Sunday.

RedNote has so far been the primary beneficiary of the exodus of US users, seeing its US app downloads increase 20-fold in the past week, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. A Duolingo spokesperson told CNBC that the company’s marketing team is “moving forward and already has an active presence on Red, managed by our team in China.”

Duolingo offers online and mobile courses in 42 languages. According to his websiteDuolingo has 48.8 million Spanish students. French is the second most popular language on the app with 27.3 million users, while Chinese is eighth at 10.7 million.

Duolingo shares have climbed 43% in the past year, outperforming the Nasdaq’s 29%.

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