The opportunity is a speaking habit that fits into ordinary life and employee learning. Lasting value depends on continued practice and usable conversation skills, beyond downloads.
See it taking shape ↓
Provide repeatable speaking practice after a free trial.
The announcement says employees took part actively, met a daily goal and rated the speech recognition accuracy and immersive learning method highly.
Adoption announced. The source is a company announcement carried by trade press.
The announcement says employees joined the challenge voluntarily, competed in a ranking and showed high engagement, with prizes and an offline event at the end.
Company announcement, 2025-06-26.
This illustrative learner follows Speak’s Learn, Practice and Apply loop. Employer distribution adds a separate buying relationship without changing who does the learning.
Expert-crafted lessons introduce phrases and patterns used in conversation. The learner begins with a situation rather than a long grammar checklist.
The learner says the pattern aloud repeatedly in new situations. Speech technology makes spoken input part of the interaction.
Speak Tutor lets the learner use the language in a conversation and receive feedback. Personalized lessons can respond to the learner’s needs.
An employer can offer Speak for Business to employees. APAC sales and customer-success teams align the offering with local learning needs and renewals.
Speak starts from a complaint most adult learners recognize. Someone can read English and still go quiet when a colleague asks a question out loud. The company's account is that language learning moved from traditional software to mobile apps, and that many methods and apps still lean on passive learning, grammar to read and blanks to fill in, while the hard part, saying the words aloud, stayed unsolved. It calls one on one tutoring the best way to learn, but says it is hard to reach at scale and has not meaningfully improved in decades. Speak's answer is conversation practice that does not need a live tutor on the other end.
Our vision hasn't changed since we started Speak eight years ago, and we remain laser focused on building the best way to get to spoken fluency with our AI tutor.
Connor Zwick · Co-founder and CEO · Speak blog, Series C announcement · 2024-12-10
The belief that sets Speak apart is about order: speaking first. Speak says it builds speaking confidence and fluency early and layers accuracy training on top later, instead of leaning on passive study. Its method page compares language to learning to drive, a skill the body learns through experience. The company claims a learner is speaking within 10 seconds of the first lesson and, on its Korean homepage, that 80 percent of lesson time is the learner speaking. Both are product claims.
Why this was possible now is partly technology and partly data. In November 2022 the company wrote that advances in large language models, the software behind chat assistants, had made its long held goal of an AI speaking companion attainable, and that month the OpenAI Startup Fund led its $27M Series B. As a portfolio company Speak had GPT-4 in production for more than two months by March 2023. The second ingredient is speech recognition that copes with learners. In June 2024 the engineering team described a model trained on many thousands of hours of heavily accented learner speech that cut word errors by more than 60 percent against a pre-trained model. In October 2024 it announced Live Roleplays, built on OpenAI's Realtime API, with a tutor the company says answers as fast or faster than a human partner.
Take an illustrative learner, a manager who must run meetings in English. The Learn step starts from a situation, not a grammar list. In house learning designers write and film the lessons, and one four unit course can hold more than 50 of them. Judgement sits with those designers, who choose what is taught and in what order, and with the learner, who chooses the situation to practice. In Practice the learner repeats the pattern aloud in changing situations and speech recognition turns what was said into feedback.
Apply is the conversation, with Speak Tutor or a roleplay. The newest version, announced in September 2026, is a live tutor that can help while a learner is mid answer. The last step, Sustain, is where an employer comes in. A company offers Speak for Business to staff, HR watches participation and a customer success manager works toward renewal. In Korea a dedicated manager consults on training needs and follows up after the contract, so the human judgement that matters most here sits with the HR buyer and the account team.
The business page offers survey figures: 97 percent would recommend the app and 86 percent report more confidence. The case a seller can make today rests on participation and satisfaction.
The promise is practice, so what an HR buyer sees is activity: hours, sentences and participation. Any gain in fluency stays in the learner's own report. The Korea openings cover both ends of this loop: content and curriculum roles shape Learn, and the sales, customer success and field marketing roles sit on Sustain, where a signed contract has to turn into employees who keep speaking.
Speak sells one method through two doors. Individuals subscribe to the app after a free trial. Employers buy it for staff as Speak for Business, which the company's Korean team shortens to S4B. The learner does the same thing either way, but the buyer, the price and the test of success differ.
The consumer product has two paid tiers. Both paid tiers include the curriculum, roleplay, Smart Review and questions to Speak Tutor. Premium allows up to three Made For You lessons daily and a daily limit on Speak Tutor personalized lessons; Premium Plus removes those lesson limits and adds a personalized study plan and practice targeting frequent mistakes. A seven day free trial comes first. On 8 October 2026, the Korean App Store listed monthly and annual purchase items at 29,000 won and 129,000 won, and Premium Plus items at 69,000 won a month and 299,000 won a year. These are the purchase item names and prices shown in the storefront. A Korean business blog names Cambly, Ringle and Tutoring as direct rivals, and Duolingo gives most new subscribers to its Super Duolingo plan a Video Call feature.
| Where the price comes from | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Korean App Store purchase items, 8 October 2026 | Monthly pass 29,000 won; annual pass 129,000 won. Premium Plus: monthly 69,000 won; annual 299,000 won. |
| Press report, June 2024 | $20 a month or $99 a year for access to all features. |
| Press report, November 2025 | Users start free and pay $80 to $200 for access to more content. |
Speak for Business is the product five of the Korea openings work on: the Head of APAC Sales, the account executive, sales development, customer success and field marketing. In Korea it was formally launched on 15 October 2024, with an admin portal promised that month so that learning and development staff could monitor employees in real time. The Korean business page sets a minimum of 15 learners and a six step route from a needs check and a dedicated manager to a contract, training and follow up. In May 2025 the Korea country manager described HR features such as roleplays built on project situations, job specific scenarios and a performance dashboard. Japan followed with a full launch on 3 February 2025.
Speak has named customers. POSCO International ran a one month Speak Challenge for staff in August 2025. The announcement says employees took part actively, met a daily goal and rated the speech recognition and learning format highly. Naver Webtoon ran a comparable month in 2025 with a ranking competition. In Japan, Sapporo Beer and LIXIL adopted the product early in 2024. In April 2026 Speak announced a language program with the Washington Nationals for players and staff across its league levels. Press coverage of the November 2025 announcement names KPMG and HD Hyundai among about 500 companies offering Speak to employees, primarily in South Korea. Each is an adoption announced by or through the company.
The one set of numbers sits behind a name that was removed. A promotional customer report published in March 2026 describes a one month challenge at an unnamed trading company whose earlier English programs, it says, had low participation and completion. Its 200 participants spoke 123,912 sentences and studied for 582 hours, which works out to roughly 620 sentences and three hours each (Signet's division). Satisfaction was 4.67 out of 5, 95 percent would use it again, 90 percent would recommend it and 56 percent said their speaking confidence had risen. These are usage counts and self reported answers from one customer in one month. They show people used the app and rated it well, and the customer should not be matched to any company named above.
Across the Korean announcements the pattern is the same: a time boxed challenge, a daily goal or ranking, and participation as proof of success. The Japanese release names early adopters and quotes one manager. That suits an HR buyer who needs a visible program. It leaves renewal open, because a one month challenge says little about a second year. The 85 percent employee adoption figure quoted in December 2024 is the company's own figure. The named reviews on the consumer homepage are individual users' words.
Organisations the company says use Speak for Business, as stated at each date. Wording varies by source (customers, corporations, corporate customers), figures are the company's own and rounded, and the press coverage describes most of them as Korean companies. Speak's Korean B2B page also reads 500+. These are dated disclosures, not a continuous growth record.
| Date | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-12-10 | 200+ | Series C announcement: more than 200 customers across industries; Accel's post says 200+ corporations. |
| 2025-06-26 | About 400 | Korean trade press carrying a company release on the Naver Webtoon programme: about 400 corporate customers so far. |
| 2025-09-24 | 400+ | Electronic Times report on the POSCO International challenge: more than 400 corporate customers in finance, construction, technology and consumer goods. |
| 2025-11 | About 500 | Forbes (Australia) says some 500 companies including KPMG and HD Hyundai offer Speak to employees, primarily in South Korea; The Signal says over 500 corporate customers. |
Speak · Accel · Fintech Economic Times (핀테크경제신문) · Electronic Times · Forbes (Australia republication) · The Signal
Funding transaction valuations are shown separately from the capital raised. These are dated disclosures, not a continuous growth record.
| Date | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-06-18 | $0.5B | Series B-3 valuation. |
| 2024-12-10 | $1B | Series C valuation. |
Speak
South Korea was the product’s inaugural market.
Raised $20M and reported more than 10M learners.
Raised $78M and reported 200+ business customers.
Speak earns money from two payers. Individuals pay a subscription, monthly or yearly, after a seven day free trial. Employers pay for access for their staff, which in Korea starts at 15 learners. One Korean business blogger argues that the cost of running the AI models rises with revenue.
The headline number is more than $100M in annualized revenue, announced in November 2025 and reported by Forbes. That is the label used here. The Signal described this figure as ARR and reported ARR above $50M at the end of 2024. In November 2022 Speak said it had double digit millions of dollars in ARR and nearly 100,000 paying subscribers. Each figure is presented with its date, publisher and metric label. Revenue growth comparisons need the same measurement basis; the employer counts and usage figures below provide their own dated growth evidence.
| When | Number | What it measures | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 2022 | Double digit millions of dollars; nearly 100,000 | ARR; paying subscribers | Company post |
| March 2022 to March 2023 | About $9.6M | Speak's in-app revenue in Korea, Apple and Google only, no enterprise or web sales | Third party estimate |
| To about April 2023 | More than $20M; 90.9% from Korea | Lifetime in-app store revenue worldwide, and Korea's share | Third party estimate |
| End of 2024 | More than $50M | ARR, as worded by a newsletter | Press-reported |
| 10 December 2024 | $78M at a $1B valuation; $162M raised in total | Series C funding, its valuation and capital raised to date | Company-reported |
| November 2025 | More than $100M | Annualized revenue | Company-announced, press-reported |
| November 2025 | About 500 | Companies offering Speak to employees, primarily in South Korea | Press-reported |
| Calendar 2025 | 3.74 billion lines spoken, up 111% | Usage, not revenue | Company-reported |
Usage and customer counts show growth more clearly than revenue does. In calendar 2025 learners spoke 3.74 billion lines, up 111 percent on 2024, and spent 19.6 million hours practicing, up 85 percent; a line is Speak's own unit. Employers rose from 200+ in December 2024 to about 400 in June 2025, 400+ in September 2025 and about 500 in November 2025, counted as organizations. Korea sits under all of it. In January 2024, 5M of the app's 7M downloads were in Korea, and an interview with the country manager reported that Korean revenue doubled in 2023. A third party estimated Korea at 90.9 percent of lifetime store revenue to about April 2023, and coverage in November 2025 said business customers were predominantly Korean companies. The push into the United States began in June 2025.
Duolingo reported $298.5M in revenue for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 and 12.7M paid subscribers. Most new subscribers to its Super Duolingo plan receive Video Call, its AI conversation feature. AI tutor startup Praktika reported almost $20M in revenue for the twelve months to May 2024. Speak reported more than $100M in annualized revenue in November 2025. These figures have different periods and measurement bases. Comparing performance calls for aligned periods and definitions; the direct product overlap is AI conversation practice.
Three risks matter for a seller in this region. Duolingo is adding AI conversation practice, which Signet reads as pressure for Speak to distinguish its speaking practice and local learner data. The measured Korea share comes from 2023, while the United States push began in June 2025; those dates make the current regional mix a useful interview question. The product also runs on OpenAI technology. A manager whose territory depends on renewals can ask how the company prioritizes these three risks.
Two habits help in an interview. Say annualized revenue, not ARR, when citing the $100M, and ask how it is measured. And keep usage, customers and money apart: lines spoken, employers counted and dollars are different kinds of number, and the company has published a trend for the first two and a single annualized figure for the third.
Zwick co-founded Speak with Andrew Hsu and signed the December 2024 funding announcement.
Speak first concentrated on South Korea, then extended the learning product to other markets and employers.
Accel describes Hsu’s AI expertise and focus on education as complementary to Zwick’s commercial drive.
The team invested in speech technology and an adaptive learning engine; this is a documented team direction, not a personal quote.
“Our vision hasn't changed since we started Speak eight years ago, and we remain laser focused on building the best way to get to spoken fluency with our AI tutor.”
Connor Zwick · Speak blog, Series C announcement · 2024-12-10
Connor Zwick is the co-founder and CEO. The company's Korean technology page says he founded an education start up, Flashcards+, at 17 and sold it, left Harvard, and went through the Thiel Fellowship and Y Combinator before starting Speak. His account of how he came to Korea is plain: it was a country he had never been to before choosing it, and had not imagined doing business in.
Korea was a country I had never been to, and I had never imagined doing business there for years.
Connor Zwick · Co-founder and CEO · Forbes Korea profile, October 2024 issue, posted online 2024-09-28; published in Korean; translated by Signet · 2024-09-28
Andrew Hsu is the co-founder and, on the September 2026 post he wrote about live tutor lessons, the chief technology officer. The company's page says he graduated from the University of Washington at 16 with three degrees and left a Stanford neuroscience PhD before starting Speak with Zwick, whom he met through the Thiel Fellowship (in 2012, by a November 2025 press account). The lead investor sees his AI expertise as the counterpart to Zwick's entrepreneurial drive. His own first person technical voice is in the post he signed.
Four decisions explain the shape of the company. One market before many: Speak refined the product in Korea for years and then took it abroad with almost no changes, in the founder's account. Owning the speech layer: it trained its own recognition model on learner speech and says it outperformed Apple Speech and Microsoft Azure Speech in its own benchmarks. Staying close to OpenAI, an investor since the 2022 Series B and a source of early model access. And adding an employer as a second payer: in Korea the CEO described more than 200 corporate customers by September 2024, and the employer product was formally launched as S4B that October.
Beyond the founders, chief operating officer Colton Gyulay is quoted on the October 2024 launch of S4B in Korea, the January 2025 Japan launch and the April 2026 Washington Nationals deal. Signet reads these appearances as evidence of his involvement in the enterprise business. Korean press named 박나은 as B2B marketing lead in June and September 2025.
Professional sports organizations are sitting on one of the most overlooked opportunities in team growth and development, with language. The Nationals understand that communication is a competitive advantage, and they're investing in it accordingly.
Colton Gyulay · Chief Operating Officer, Speak · Speak blog on the Washington Nationals program · 2026-04-14
Four ideas recur in what Speak publishes about itself. Speaking comes first, and accuracy is layered on later. Core skills are built in house, a point 2025 podcast show notes with the CEO sum up as the line that a company cannot outsource a core competency. The company says it hires thoughtfully and works only with people it admires deeply. In an April 2025 interview the Korea team names low ego, high professionalism as its most important value, and another has the team giving its response to a crisis as focusing on what it can control. The careers page lists equity, unlimited leave and a monthly language learning stipend.
I do not want to sell the company again. I love running the company and want to commit to Speak for decades to come.
Connor Zwick · Co-founder and CEO · Forbes Korea profile, October 2024 issue, posted online 2024-09-28; published in Korean; translated by Signet · 2024-09-28
On the worry that Seoul only executes, the evidence is mixed. A profile published with an April 2025 interview of the Korea team describes Korea as a core hub that helps shape brand message and product strategy, and the Korea postings ask Seoul to send what it learns back: the Head of APAC Sales gives market specific feedback to product, engineering and content, and the Head of Marketing turns Korea insights into playbooks for other markets. Against that, sales targets and quota are set with company leadership and with company wide finance and operations teams. In an interview it is fair to ask which decisions Seoul can take without sign off. The CEO's 2024 statement that he does not want to sell again addresses the worry about an exit driven change of direction, but it is one sentence from one year.
The postings ask for selling Speak for Business and keeping customers renewing, growing the consumer brand and the enterprise pipeline, running people operations across Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and localizing lessons and designing curriculum on contract.
People named in public material in September 2025; a named list, not the full team headcount.
Team shape read from public LinkedIn profiles at human speed on 6 October 2026; the org chart above is the current reading. Counts are people found, not official headcount, and grouping does not establish reporting lines.
By the founder's own account, Speak did not go to Korea because it had a foothold there. Korea was a country he had never been to before he chose it; in 2020 he said he had run user tests in several Asian countries, including Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia, and found none as keen on English. The reasons he gave in 2020 and again in 2025 are demand (Koreans want to speak English more than people in other countries, to the point of an obsession), early adoption of good products, Korea's role as a trendsetter for Asia, and a crowded market in which a better experience can beat the number one. A technical reason sits underneath: in 2021 he noted that phone assistants understand American English better than Korean accented English, and Speak has since built a recognition system on data from more than 1 million Korean speakers, a company claim. The bet then became the bulk of the business: 5M of the app's 7M downloads were in Korea in January 2024, and a third party estimated that 90.9 percent of lifetime in-app store revenue came from Korea to about April 2023.
A Korea team member dates the launch of Speak in Korea to the end of 2019 and recalls the CEO saying from then on that within ten years everyone would learn English with AI.
The Korean subsidiary, Speakeasy Labs Korea (스픽이지랩스코리아), is recorded on a company database as established on 15 October 2020.
In a Korean interview the CEO gives his reasons for choosing Korea first: strong will to speak English, early adopters, a trendsetter for Asia, and a market where a better experience can win.
A company release said first half 2023 revenue was 2.05 times the year before and that cumulative downloads had passed 4M.
An interview with the Korea country manager reported that Korean app downloads had passed 5M as of January 2024 and that Korean revenue doubled in 2023.
The employer product, called S4B in Korea, was formally launched, with an admin portal for learning and development staff promised the same month. The CEO had already described more than 200 Korean corporate customers in a profile posted in late September 2024.
After the Series C the CEO said Speak reached its position thanks to Korea, its first market and still its strongest.
Speak Japan announced the full launch of Speak for Business for 3 February 2025, after early adoption at Sapporo Beer and LIXIL in 2024.
Naver Webtoon (June 2025) and POSCO International (September 2025) each ran a month long Speak Challenge for staff, announced in Korean press.
By the founder's account Korea was a country he had never been to before choosing it, and the reasons he gave in 2020 and 2025 come to four: Koreans want to speak English more than people elsewhere, to the point of an obsession in his 2025 word; they adopt good products early; Korea is a trendsetter for Asia, so success there should carry elsewhere; and a crowded market is a big market, where a better experience can beat the number one. A technical reason sits underneath: in 2021 he noted that phone assistants understand American English better than Korean accented English, an opening for a model trained on Korean learners.
Speak reached its present position thanks to Korea. Korea was our first market and is still the strongest, and we are very hopeful about its future growth.
Connor Zwick · Co-founder and CEO · Statement quoted in Korean by Edaily after the Series C; translated from Korean by Signet · 2024-12-19
Korea gave the company a product tested in a demanding market and a revenue base. Speak launched there at the end of 2019, and a company release issued in Korea put first half 2023 revenue at 2.05 times the year before. By January 2024, 5M of the app's 7M downloads were in Korea. Every measure found shows Korea as the largest part of the business, up to the last date measured.
Enterprise is the newer layer. Speak for Business was formally launched in Korea on 15 October 2024, but in late September 2024 the CEO already said eight of Korea's ten largest companies used it; the claim was repeated in December 2024 and September 2025. Named Korean customers include POSCO International and Naver Webtoon, and the Korean business page shows employer logos and short HR quotes, among them KRAFTON and LG U+. The page sets a 15 learner minimum and a dedicated manager; announced programs have been one month challenges.
On 6 October 2026, LinkedIn’s South Korea filter showed 42 profiles with titles in marketing, B2B sales, customer success, people, learning content and finance. Earlier press put the Korea branch at 20 to 25 people in February 2024, and pension-based job databases showed 35 to 44 for the Korean subsidiary in 2025. The Seoul office is in Seongsu, described on the careers page as home to the marketing and operations teams.
What the first hires are for shows in the postings. On 8 October 2026 Speak's own job board listed 11 Korea openings: seven hybrid roles in Seoul and four remote contracts. Five sit on the B2B team and form a sales chain. The sales development representative qualifies leads and closes transactional deals; the account executive needs five years of closing new and upsell business in HR, learning and development or related software, selling to companies with 5,000 or more employees on cycles of 3 to 12 months; the customer success manager owns renewals; the senior field marketing specialist builds enterprise pipeline; and the Head of APAC Sales manages the account executives and an SDR team leader directly. Around that chain sit a Head of Marketing for the consumer business, an APAC people operations generalist and four contracts that localize lessons and design curriculum across Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Read together, Speak is staffing its Korea business seat by seat, with the employer product at the center. That is Signet's reading.
The job description calls Speak the number one language learning app in Korea. Sensor Tower estimated that Speak led Korean education apps by app-store revenue from 16 March 2022 to 15 March 2023. This is a dated revenue estimate. App Store charts measure a different ranking that changes over time, so the metric and period behind the hiring claim deserve a separate check.
For the worry that Seoul is a satellite: the Korean subsidiary has existed since 2020, Korea supplied most downloads and, to 2023, most store revenue, and the company is hiring across the sales chain there. Against it: the Head of APAC Sales and APAC people operations postings also cover Japan and Taiwan, the sales one adds future emerging markets, and the newest consumer push targets English speakers in the United States. Korea looks core today; the current numbers are worth asking for.
Current Signet catalog · 2026-10-19
Korea was Speak's first market, and in December 2024 the CEO still called it the strongest. You work right next to that market.
Speak announced $20M financing and described improved accented-speech recognition.
Speak raised $78M at a $1B valuation.
The same release reported 200+ Speak for Business customers.
Read against the thesis, the last year has three threads. The first is the number: in November 2025 the company announced more than $100M in annualized revenue, and in 2025 learners spoke 3.74 billion lines, 111 percent more than in 2024. The second is a second front. Speak began by teaching English in Korea, Japan and Taiwan; in June 2025 it launched French, Japanese, Korean and Italian for English speakers, after Spanish, and in June 2026 it added Mandarin Chinese. In August 2023 it had planned to enter the United States by the end of that year, so the push that began in June 2025 came later than planned, and the Washington Nationals program of April 2026 is a named United States customer. The third thread is the voice.
In September 2026 Speak announced live tutor lessons built on OpenAI's GPT-Live-1, starting with a limited rollout for English and Spanish learners. It is the original thesis made faster: a tutor that can help while a learner is mid answer and does not talk over thinking pauses. In the company's own test a model set up as a generic assistant interrupted 27.6 percent of pauses, against 13.6 percent when given a tutor's role. That is an internal evaluation of one model. It shows the company still builds on OpenAI's newest models, as it did with GPT-4 in 2023 and the Realtime API in 2024.
For a reader in Korea, Speak's enterprise news appears in Korean press, customer announcements and hiring. The hiring came in steps: marketing and people operations first, then curriculum design, sales development and the Head of APAC Sales, posted on 3 July 2026, then content localization, customer success and an account executive. Every one of those postings was open in the first week of October 2026 and is listed below.
Someone can understand written English and still freeze when speaking. Speak provides a curriculum and AI conversation partner so learners can practise aloud without waiting for a tutor’s schedule.
The postings ask for selling Speak for Business and keeping customers renewing, growing the consumer brand and the enterprise pipeline, running people operations across Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and localizing lessons and designing curriculum on contract.
Employer postings were checked on 2026-10-10. Availability can change. Mock applications request a review from Signet.
Follow the company from its vision through products, evidence and people to the Korea team and current roles. Use the table of contents to move within the page, and expand the sections for more context.