When Class Central covered the Coursera-Udemy merger completion, Hugo Sarrazin’s role was unclear. Not anymore. He’s joining Avalara, a tax and compliance company, as CEO. Here’s the thing. Neither an SEC filing nor a public post announced the departure of the 14-month CEO, which led Udemy to its first profitable year and the $2.5 billion all-stock merger. The Quiet Exit The Coursera-Udemy merger was completed on May 11, 2026. Coursera even released a completion 8-K once it was done. Sarrazin,

In Q4 2025, Duolingo announced it would let go of $50M in bookings to reach 100 million daily active users (DAUs) by 2028; a strategy Class Central covered in detail last month.  2026 is its “investment year,” and Q1 was the first quarter of execution. So far, the plan seems to be working. The Expected Results: Low Bookings, High DAUs Duolingo is running multiple tests to improve the free experience: spoken tokens for speaking practice, Speaking Adventures for real-world conversations, and fla

Subscriber growth and revenue are accelerating even as revenue per user declines. Udemy built its empire on a simple idea: anyone could create a course, and anyone could buy one. That marketplace model made Udemy famous and made millionaires out of its top instructors. Now the company is deliberately killing it. In Q3 2025 earnings call, Udemy’s CFO admitted they are “intentionally reducing” single course sales to push users toward subscriptions. The logic is straightforward: Udemy keeps 82.5%

In 2027, Duolingo is shutting down Duolingo for Schools, its free classroom tool that helped teachers track student progress and assign lessons. Coursera did the same thing last year, ending free course audits. It seemed sudden, but the signs were there. Class Central tracked the Duolingo for Schools shutdown too. And this time, the signs were all across social media platforms. Why the Shutdown? Duolingo for Schools was launched in 2015. Within a week, more than 10,000 teachers and 25,000 stud