Who is behind italki? For me italki has always been this cozy little language learning site where all those language enthusiasts hang out. And I have to say I really love this site because people are very friendly and helpful. But I realized that I actually don't have a clue who is behind this site. Is it a little start-up from Berlin? Or is it a product of some app company? Has it been bought out by some major tech company? Surprisingly italki's roots are actually in Asia. According to Wikipedia it was founded in Hongkong by the student Kevin Chen. He was learning French and Chinese at the time and started building this platform when he realized that his learning progress was much faster when he learned with native speakers. When italki raised fundings in 2016, it raised 3 million dollars from Hujiang, a company backed by the Chinese tech company Baidu. Hujiang is China`s largest e-learning platform. So it is safe to say that by now italki is mostly a Chinese company. And if we go to the About section of italki, we see that most of the jobs are offered in Shanghai. Who would have thought that? :)