Babbel

The company was founded in August 2007 by Thomas Holl, Toine Diepstraten, Lorenz Heine and Markus Witte. In January 2008, the language learning platform went online with community features as a free beta version.

In March 2013, Babbel acquired San Francisco startup PlaySay Inc. to expand into the United States. As part of the acquisition, PlaySay's founder and CEO joined Babbel as a strategic advisor. Later that year, a third funding round led by Scottish Equity Partners raised another $22 million. Other participants in this round include previous investors Reed Elsevier Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, and VC Fonds Technology Berlin.

In response to increased migration to Europe, Babbel provided German courses worth one million euros for refugees in 2015. However, these courses could only be used with English or French as the starting language, as no courses with Arabic as the base language had been developed.

According to the company, Babbel recorded up to 5,000 new registrations per hour in 2016. At that time, the apps were downloaded up to 120,000 times per day.

In 2019, co-founder Markus Witte stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Arne Schepker. In March 2020, a works council was elected in the Berlin office. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Babbel saw a significant increase in demand. In 2022, revenue rose by 31% compared to the previous year, reaching 250 million euros.

In March 2022, Babbel provided free access codes to Ukrainian refugees, allowing those with prior knowledge of languages offered by Babbel to learn relevant languages such as German, Polish, and English. Also in May 2022, Babbel launched a Ukrainian interface for Ukrainian speakers to learn German, Polish, and English for free.

In February 2023, Babbel was awarded the "CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Silver Anthem Award for Humanitarian Action & Services" for its efforts to help displaced people affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time, over 500,000 Ukrainians accessed Babbel courses under the program.

In 2023, Babbel acquired Toucan (a language-learning browser extension). At the time, it had around 1000 full-time employees and freelancers. In October 2024, Markus Witte returned as CEO.

Business model

Babbel was conceived as an advertising-financed platform, but switched to a subscription model in 2009. Since then, users have been paying per month for access to courses in their browser or via an app. According to the company, more than half of subscribers renew their subscription after one year. The business model thus differs from other early online offerings, which relied more heavily on advertising financing or community concepts.

Originally, Babbel incorporated a community-oriented structure that was designed to enable learners to connect with one another. This concept proved unsuccessful, as learning pairs or groups were rarely formed. As a result, the company shifted its approach to individual learning supported by structured exercises.

In addition to individual customers, Babbel increasingly targets corporate clients that purchase language training packages for their employees.

Products and services

Core app experience

Babbel offers courses in 14 languages, which can be learned from seven source languages, making more than 130 language combinations possible. The platform contains over 60,000 lessons and around 13,000 hours of learning content.