Luis von Ahn (Spanish: [ˈlwis fon ˈan]; born 19 August 1978) is a Guatemalan-American entrepreneur, software developer, and consulting professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[13] When he applied to colleges in the United States, von Ahn had to spend more than $1,200 to fly to neighboring El Salvador to take the TOEFL.

[10] At age 18, von Ahn began studying at Duke University, where he received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Mathematics, summa cum laude, in 2000.

In 2000, he did early pioneering work with Manuel Blum on CAPTCHAs,[19] computer-generated tests that humans are routinely able to pass but that computers have not yet mastered.

CAPTCHAs brought von Ahn his first widespread fame among the general public due to their coverage in the New York Times and USA Today and on the Discovery Channel, NOVA scienceNOW, and other mainstream outlets.

His thesis won the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.

In July 2006, von Ahn gave a tech talk at Google on "Human Computation" (i.e., crowdsourcing) which was watched by over one million viewers.

[25] In 2009, von Ahn and his graduate student Severin Hacker began to develop Duolingo, a language education platform.

In May 2021 von Ahn joined the executive committee of Partnership for Central America, an entity bringing together a variety of businesses, academic organizations and nonprofit organizations "to advance economic opportunity, address urgent climate, education and health challenges, and promote long-term investments and workforce capability building to support a vision of hope for Central America".

[29] The Partnership for Central America was presented in the context of the United States' Vice President Kamala Harris's "call to action" to address irregular migration from Central America to the United States by "deepening investment in the Northern Triangle" (a term coined to refer to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras).

[40] In his 2023 Ted Talk, he emphasised on the importance of making learning as fun as playing video games or using social media apps, by using similar features such as streak, leaderboard, etc.