Duolingo shares surge 7% as users flock to the app to learn Mandarin

Duolingo shares rose nearly 7% on Thursday after a big surge in users signing up to learn Mandarin combined with a surge in Chinese social media usage RedNotecompetitor of TikTok.

The company confirmed to CNBC that the number of Mandarin learners using the app has increased by 216% compared to last year. For context, Spanish, one of the most popular languages ​​in the app, has grown by 40% over the same period, according to Duolingo.

RedNote, or Xiaohongshu as it is called in China, has quickly become the #1 free app on the an apple app store, a position he has held for most of this week. Rounding out the top five are TikTok’s Lemon8 app, American social media upstart Clapper, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta Threads.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of the future of TikTok in the US, and the law that can actually ban a popular app. The justices appeared to be in favor of upholding the law, and a decision could be made as early as Friday. There is TikTok according to reports is preparing to shut down in the US on Sunday.

RedNote has so far been the main beneficiary of the exodus of US users, seeing downloads of its US apps jump 20-fold in the past week, according to market analytics firm Sensor Tower. A Duolingo spokesperson told CNBC that the company’s marketing team is “forward-thinking and already has a strong presence on Red, which is managed by our team in China.”

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

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

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