Duolingo shares rise 7% as users flock to Mandarin learning app

Duolingo shares rose nearly 7% on Thursday after a surge in users signing up to learn Mandarin alongside increased use of the Chinese social networking app. RedNoteTikTok’s rival.

The company confirmed to CNBC that the number of Mandarin students using the app has increased by 216% compared to a year ago. For context, Spanish, one of the app’s most popular languages, has seen a 40% increase over the same period, Duolingo said.

RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, as it’s known in China, has risen to the No. 1 free app. the apple app store, a position that has been maintained for most of this week. The top five include TikTok’s Lemon8 app, US social media startup Clapper, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s the threads

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case The future of TikTok In the US, and a law that could effectively ban the popular app. The justices were in favor of enforcing the law, and the decision could come as soon as Friday. It’s TikTok as reported in preparation for the US close on Sunday.

RedNote has so far been the main beneficiary of the exodus of American users, with US app downloads up 20x in the past week, according to market intelligence from Sensor Tower. A Duolingo spokesperson told CNBC that the company’s marketing team “is advanced and already has an active presence in Red, which our team manages in China.”

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

Duolingo shares rose 43% last year, outpacing the Nasdaq’s 29% gain.

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