Slang's co-founders, Diego Villegas and Kamran Khan, explained to Forbes that they design personalized learning paths for each professional area and currently have over 100 corporate clients.
It’s one thing to converse and write in English, and another to develop software and conduct business in English. The specific verbs and idioms of professional fields are what Slang teaches.
Diego Villegas and Kamran Khan, co-founders of Slang, explained to Forbes that the platform's technology is user-centered and data-driven, allowing it to be highly adaptive and significantly accelerate professional-level language acquisition.
Slang, named one of Colombia’s 30 Business Promises this year, will use the new funds to expand its technological infrastructure, launch new features, strengthen its presence in Latin America, and lay the groundwork for global expansion.
Starting as an MIT research project in 2013 on the use of technology to accelerate language learning, Slang has been focused on improving professional English. The platform offers more than 130 courses covering highly specialized areas such as healthcare, law, finance, and technology, boosting productivity for professionals in a globalized job market.
Currently, they have 40,000 active licenses in more than ten countries, with offices in the U.S., Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. Slang’s extensive course catalog allows its over 100 corporate and institutional clients to take their teams beyond basic English, designing personalized learning paths for each sector, industry, or role. The courses are also optimized for rapid learning using proprietary AI and machine learning technology.
"This is an important step in our mission to eradicate functional illiteracy, as it provides access to learning and new opportunities. With our new partners and resources, we will take this goal to the next level," said Slang CEO and co-founder Diego Villegas. "Our vision is to become the industry standard for professional English development and certification."
Today, 6.6 billion people worldwide do not speak English or have limited access to technical knowledge, innovation, and new developments in their fields due to over 90% of technical and scientific literature being published exclusively in English. By closing the professional English literacy gap, Slang’s solutions increase social mobility and improve job opportunities for low-income populations.
Other platforms like Platzi, which recently secured a $62 million investment, are also making strong moves into online English courses for businesses.
“We will continue to develop our technology to improve the modular learning process we've built, which is user-centered. I’m excited about the research projects and advancements we have planned for our natural language processing technology and pedagogical approaches,” added Kamran Khan, CTO and co-founder.
