🤯 Wait, what?
If you’re here, you must have heard the crazy news: Duolingo is acquiring Hobbes!
Let us be the first to say how excited we are about this, and though it didn’t come about without a rollercoaster of emotions, we couldn’t be any more thrilled about what this means for the future of the studio and our team!
🤔 How it happened…
Hobbes has grown from a three-person experiment into a refined and methodical mindset toward problem-solving, with a dozen members and many more contributors. Over the last 6 years, we’ve built up our team, process, and capabilities to be a powerhouse studio in the interactive and product space—making this sudden change a pivotal plot twist in our story!
In February 2024, Duolingo approached Hobbes with an acquisition proposal. After careful consideration, we saw this as an opportunity to embark on a new, promising chapter in our journey.
We are thrilled that Duolingo has sought out Hobbes specifically for our approach and process. In joining them, we’ll have realized the mission Hobbes established since the beginning: to put animators in the driver’s seat and design products that are motion-led, user-focused, and wholly delightful to use.
We are so grateful for all our team members, past Hobbesians, freelancers, clients, friends, family, mentors, followers, and dogs who have supported us along the way.
If you’re ever in Detroit, hit us up! We’d love to grab some coffee ☕ :)
Love, Hobbes
(top) Antonio, TJ, Eddy, Tess, Stacey, Adam (bottom) Nick, Dan, Kikko, Evan, Alex, Nevin
🤷 FAQ
Tell me more! What led to this decision?
Over the last 6 months, we’ve built up Hobbes to harbor new members and new capabilities to expand our holistic studio offering. Our sights were set on emboldening our animation thinking with in-house roles like a strategy director and a creative technologist. So when Duolingo approached us, we were initially apprehensive about setting aside our promising roadmap for a complete curveball.
Ultimately, after some thorough conversations and many, MANY questions, we found ourselves convinced that this acquisition was in line with our studio goals and the reasons we wanted to run Hobbes in the first place:
- Hobbes’ mission is to develop a strong point of view on functional motion for user experiences. Duolingo sought us out for that approach and fundamentally understood what we do. On top of that, they wanted to embolden our process with access to developers, resources, and an army of tinkerers like us.
- Hobbes has always prioritized enrichment, discovery, and continual learning. Duolingo shares the value of enrichment and education for its employees. They seek to curate an environment that encourages experimentation and learning. Not to mention, their company goal is to bring universal access to the world. This is a mission we can get behind!
- Hobbes wants to hire, grow, and work with talented people with ample support for their goals inside and outside the studio. Duolingo takes hiring very seriously and is dedicated to seeing their employees thrive. We can’t wait to see our team blossom with access to the resources and facilities Duolingo offers both at work and in life.
Is everyone joining?
Yes! And we’re lucky to bring a few close friends along ;)
Are you staying in Detroit?
We sure are! We stoked to see even more love come to our hometown through this whole process!
How is everyone feeling?
It has definitely been an emotional roller coaster, but overall, everyone is feeling very excited! Throughout this process, we took our time vetting the opportunity and understood that we’d need to be willing to part ways with our day-to-day at Hobbes. This has led to a beautiful celebration of the studio and an excitement for new things to come!
Hey, didn’t your sister studio, Gunner, also get acquired by Duolingo? Did that influence Hobbes’ decision to do the same?
It’s true! After Duolingo’s acquisition of Gunner in 2022, we were able to see the direct impact of their integration - how the app’s metrics and user engagement were directly affected by this bolstered focus on animation and design. While that has been super encouraging, we ultimately made this decision solely based on what it means for Hobbes and its team members - a unique chance to realize the mission of our studio and continue taking advantage of opportunities to expand and try new things.
What happens to Hobbes?
Hobbes’s legacy will live on through its new website, socials, and developed products as a record of its body of work. In the future, it will operate as a thriving framework for approach, process, curiosity, and interrogation that it has curated over the last 6 years of operation. Follow us @hobbes on Instagram for future updates!
What happens next?
We are now officially a part of Duolingo!! Moving forward, the Hobbes studio space will be a part of the Duolingo Detroit office, joining our counterparts next door. If you ever find yourself in Detroit, hit us up!
This has been a crazy time. Thanks for all the love and wish us luck on our new journey!
About
Hobbes is a team of animators problem-solvers focused on furthering Motion as a design discipline and applying its principles to digital products and emerging technologies.
a.k.a. Let’s put animator’s in the driver’s seat and see what happens!
Contact
hobbes.work
Instagram
info@hobbes.work
Address
4885 15th St Unit 2A
Detroit, MI 48208