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Speak

United States ยท Privately owned

Speak sells a phone app that uses artificial intelligence to help people practice speaking a new language out loud.

Speak is a language-learning app built around one skill that most apps barely touch: actually talking. Duolingo, the giant of the category, is great at getting you to tap the right answer on a screen. Speak wants you to open your mouth and say the words, and it uses artificial intelligence to listen, judge how you sound, and tell you what to fix. The company's first and biggest market is English, aimed at people who already study the language but freeze when it's time to speak it in real life.

The core product is a subscription app. Learners work through short lessons, repeat phrases out loud, and get instant feedback on pronunciation, grammar, and word choice from an AI tutor. The pitch is simple: a private, patient conversation partner that never gets bored or judges you, available any time for the price of a monthly subscription. That subscription is the business. Individual learners pay for it directly, mostly through their phones, and the company also sells access to companies and schools that want to train their people.


Speak's edge is that it went all-in on speech when its rivals were focused on reading and tapping. That bet is paying off. The company has raised serious venture money โ€” a round reported at $78 million in late 2024 valued it around $1 billion, making it a rare "unicorn" in consumer education โ€” and it has been expanding from its base in South Korea into Japan and other markets and rolling out more languages beyond English. The big question is whether people keep paying once the novelty fades and whether cheaper AI tools from Alphabet and Apple make basic conversation practice a free feature rather than a paid one. For now, Speak is a focused bet that speaking, not scrolling, is where language learning gets real.

Saved answer ยท last researched 15 Nov 2026