Graduated from:
- ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
- Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Company Filing History:
Years Active: 2016
The Hacker Who Taught the World to Speak: Severin Hacker and the Code Behind Duolingo
In the world of language learning, few names carry the quiet precision and global impact of Severin Hacker. Yes, that is his real name, which makes him arguably the most benign hacker ever to reshape human communication.
Born in Switzerland and forged in ETH Zurich and Carnegie Mellon University halls, Hacker has always straddled two worlds: the rigorous logic of machine learning and the messy, beautiful chaos of human language. After completing his BS in Computer Science at ETH Zurich in 2006, he dove into a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon, researching large-scale human computation under the mentorship of Luis von Ahn, the same man who once made you type blurry words to prove you're not a robot (CAPTCHA) and who later co-founded Duolingo with Hacker in 2011.
Their idea was radical and refreshingly obvious: create a language learning platform that’s free, fun, and data-driven. Severin, now Duolingo’s Chief Technology Officer, became the architect of its intelligent backend—the code that decides which Spanish verb you’ve mastered and which will haunt you in tomorrow’s practice session.
Under his technological stewardship, Duolingo grew from a quirky app into a global platform with over half a billion users and more than 40 languages, from French to Klingon. For his work, Hacker received the MIT Technology Review TR35 Award in 2014, recognizing him as one of the world’s top innovators under 35.
Quietly brilliant and fluently methodical, Severin Hacker didn’t just help build an app, he built an algorithmic bridge between people, cultures, and the future of education.