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Duolingo's Stock Down 38%, Plummets After OpenAI's GPT-5 Language App-Building Demo

Duolingo's stock peaked at $529.05 on May 16th. Three months later, it's down 38% — with that drop starting shortly after backlash to the CEO's promise to make it an "AI-first" company. Yet "The backlash against Duolingo going 'AI-first' didn't even matter," TechCrunch wrote August 7th, not...

And in a few minutes GPT-5 churned out several iterations, with flashcards, a progress tracker, and even a simple snake-style game with a French twist, a mouse and cheese variation to learn new vocab.... Tucked into the risk factors section, Duolingo notes, "It is possible that a new product could gain rapid scale at the expense of existing brands through harnessing a new technology (such as generative AI)." [The article adds later that "Rapid development and fierce competition can leave firms suddenly behind — perceived as under threat, inferior, or obsolete — from every iteration of OpenAI's models and from the moves of other influential AI players..."]

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