companies

Speak

AI-powered language app that gets learners speaking out loud from day one, using roleplay conversations and speech-recognition drills instead of translation exercises.

Speak was founded in 2016 by Connor Zwick and Andrew Hsu, two Thiel Fellows who met after both dropping out of college to build startups. Zwick had previously built Flashcards+, a study app later acquired by Chegg; that experience shaped Speak's contrarian bet that language learners need less quizzing and more actual talking. The company built its early traction in South Korea and Japan, where demand for English-speaking practice is intense, before expanding into Spanish, French, and other languages for English-speaking learners. Speak combines speech recognition with conversational AI to run learners through roleplay scenarios, sentence-repetition drills, and open-ended chat sessions, giving real-time feedback on what was actually said rather than testing recall of vocabulary lists. The approach caught OpenAI's attention; its Startup Fund invested early and has cited Speak as one of its first consumer bets on GPT-style models. In December 2024 the company raised a $78 million Series C led by Accel at a $1 billion valuation, following a Series B extension earlier the same year, bringing total funding above $150 million from investors including Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator. Speak is based in San Francisco with additional offices in Seoul, Tokyo, and Ljubljana, reflecting where much of its user base is concentrated.

Founded

2016

Headquarters

San Francisco, United States

Sector

applications