Glaux

Glaux was established by Daniel Glauser and Severin Hacker. Hacker co-founded Duolingo and served as its chief technology officer through the company's 2021 initial public offering, while Glauser was an early employee who worked on product and engineering. The firm was capitalized primarily with proceeds from Duolingo equity, making it a founder-liquidity vehicle structured as an asset manager rather than a single-family office.

The firm leans heavily on the technical networks of its two founders, which extend through ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon University, and the broader Duolingo alumni community. Glaux prioritizes opportunities where its principals can diligence the underlying technology firsthand—an advantage rooted in their engineering backgrounds. They also co-invest alongside venture funds and participate in syndicates that surface through the Swiss and German startup ecosystems.

Structurally, Glaux is an asset manager, not a single-family office. It deploys capital sourced from the Duolingo liquidity event, but it is organized to operate with portfolio-management discipline rather than family-office wealth-preservation constraints. The firm does not publicly disclose outside limited partners, and its posture suggests it remains principally a proprietary-capital vehicle for the founders.

Glaux concentrates on enterprise software, applied artificial intelligence, fintech infrastructure, climate technology, and digital health. Across these sectors, the firm pursues a mix of early-stage venture, growth equity, and selective public-market technology positions. The investment approach is concentrated, with the partners writing meaningful checks into a curated set of companies rather than spraying small bets across a broad portfolio.

Duolingo is the wealth-origin entity for Glaux's capital base. Severin Hacker remains a director and significant shareholder of Duolingo, while Daniel Glauser holds shares from his tenure as an early employee. Glaux operates independently of Duolingo and makes no investment decisions on behalf of the company, though the founders' continued visibility into consumer-technology product cycles informs their investment lens.

No. Glaux does not publicly report assets under management, total deployment, or portfolio valuations. The firm's private-capital structure means it is not required to file public disclosures with Swiss or US securities regulators, and the principals have chosen to keep these figures confidential.

The firm is not a traditional venture capital fund with a fixed fund life, committed limited-partner capital, and a mandate to return capital within a defined window. Because Glaux deploys proprietary founder capital, it can hold positions indefinitely, recycle gains without distribution pressure, and make concentrated bets without the diversification requirements that institutional LPs typically impose on fund managers.