Cinelingo

Cinelingo teaches -aural- foreign language comprehension using science based methods, with comprehensible input generated by AI.

Our pedagogical approach has been approved by a PhD language acquisition expert, our app prototype has been built, and our genAI framework for generating comprehensible input (video) is developed.

Our current fundraise is so that we can build the content to power the first 1,000 words of language learning -- ~2000 words language represent roughly ~90% of spoken content.

The CEO of Duolingo famously segments language learners into two large buckets. People that want to learn English and Everyone else. Our launch languages reflect this, targeting English Learners, Spanish Learners, and French Learners.

More specifically, within Spanish, our initial research has shown that in the US there's a large demand for -Medical- and -Culinary- Spanish, as people working in Healthcare and the Restaurant Industry live in highly verbal/auditory based environments and have comprehension gaps.

Foreign language comprehension. We want you to be able to understand a language when you hear it -- after two years of app-based study, the majority of foreign language learners score only twenty percent on listening comprehension.

Our approach is multifaceted, but the core of it is - we help a learner acquire a language by exposure. "Comprehensible Input" -- we can scaffolding a learner's vocabulary by progressively increasing the complexity of content they receive.

We use AI to monitor their progression, and GenAI to help generate some of the content they consume, making cinematic clips tuned to their comprehension level.

Duolingo. Babbel. Pimsleur. SpeakAI. Busuu. Italki. Rosetta Stone. Preply.

1. None of our competitors are focused on aural language comprehension, and
2. the majority of them are "translation based" as opposed to "comprehension based", which requires teaching from language pairs ("English for Spanish Speakers") as opposed to our science-backed approach which teaches in target language only, which helps a learner develop "native-like" comprehension skills.
3. And none of them are generating content with the type and scale that we do (yet)

Our primary revenue stream will be monthly subscriptions. We're testing various cost structures but our initial projections are based on a $7 arp.

Monthly subscription. Direct to consumer individual students, and direct to teachers/academics for group purchases.

AI content generation costs
Marketing
IP Filing
Native Speaker Video Content (real, not AI)
Founder Burn

We're raising $150k at a $1.5mm cap, so ~10%.

Second entrants, competitor pivots.

N/A

Just recently (April 2026) placed second in a pitch competition here in Ericeira, run by Phira Ventures, a VC firm from Lisbon/New York.

We have created four novel algorithms that power our underlying assessment engine --- the process by which we surface words/content for a user's reinforcement and evaluate their comprehension.