Speak promotional image / Captured from Speak's homepage

Colton Gyulay, chief operating officer at Speak

Korea has become the centerpiece of Speak's global growth strategy, as learners here have few chances to practice speaking despite their high level of exam-focused grammar and reading skills, the firm's chief operating officer said.

He described the country as its most strategically important market and a proving ground for products that are now expanding globally.

"Korea is and will always be a key market for us," Colton Gyulay, chief operating officer at Speak, said in a recent interview, noting that the company chose Korea as its first market when it launched in 2019.

According to Gyulay, Korea's English education environment made it an ideal place to develop Speak's conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform. While Korean learners typically acquire strong grammar and reading skills through years of exam-oriented education, they have relatively few opportunities to practice speaking.

That gap, combined with high motivation to improve English proficiency and rapid adoption of new technologies, helped shape Speak's early growth, he said.

Gyulay said Japan shares a similarly test-focused education system but generally records lower English proficiency. More broadly, he noted that learners across Asia often prioritize speaking accurately over speaking confidently, creating a common psychological barrier to language acquisition.

"The fear of making mistakes and being judged when learning a new language is universal," he said.

Korea has also become the first market for Speak for Business, the company's enterprise solution, which was introduced after employees increasingly asked their employers to subsidize Speak subscriptions.

Since launching the service in late 2024, Speak has partnered with more than 500 companies worldwide, with Korean firms accounting for more than half of those partnerships. This makes Korea stand at the center of the firm's corporate expansion strategy.

Looking ahead, Gyulay said Speak remains open to expanding partnerships with more Korean companies across diverse sectors.

He also argued that Speak distinguishes itself from conventional language-learning apps by designing its platform around spoken fluency rather than textbook instruction.

Instead of relying on vocabulary drills and grammar memorization, Speak focuses on helping users build practical conversational skills through AI-powered simulations that mimic real-life interactions.

Unlike competitors that later incorporated generative AI into existing products, the company's technology was built from the ground up to support adaptive speech recognition, natural conversations and personalized feedback, Gyulay said.