The challenge
Duolingo employees struggled to find the knowledge they needed to do their best work. Information was scattered across tools like Google Drive, Slack, Confluence, and Zendesk, making it hard to track down relevant documents or past discussions. Employees often had to ask colleagues for help or redo work that already existed elsewhere.
To bridge this gap, Duolingo built an internal search tool called Metasearch. But without advanced filtering or ranking, it didn’t deliver fast, reliable results. Teams still spent too much time searching instead of focusing on their work. As Duolingo grew, these inefficiencies only became more frustrating.
The solution
Glean connected to Duolingo’s existing tools, making information instantly searchable across the company. Employees could now:
- Find answers instantly — no more switching between apps or digging through outdated files.
- Reduce duplicate work by surfacing relevant knowledge before teams started from scratch.
- Streamline collaboration by making knowledge easily accessible without relying on colleagues.
Glean Chat was a game-changer. As a conversational AI assistant, it gave employees a faster way to get clear, personalized answers. Instead of sending Slack messages and waiting for responses, they simply asked Glean.
"Glean Chat is the most underrated feature within Glean," said Art Chaidarun, Principal Software Engineer at Duolingo. "Similar to how some people now reach for ChatGPT before Google, Glean Chat can answer some questions even more effectively than a search can."
The impact
With Glean, Duolingo teams save 500+ hours every month — time that would have been wasted searching for information or duplicating work. That adds up to more than $1.1 million in yearly time savings, delivering a 5x return on investment from improved knowledge access.
"Employees’ time is expensive," said Art. "Making our documentation more accessible was an easy way to save time, especially in cases where finding existing company knowledge could prevent duplication of effort."
By cutting down on wasted time and frustration, Glean helps Duolingo employees focus on what they do best — building innovative ways for people to learn languages.
