Zhihu (02390; ZH) announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025 on March 25. The report indicates that Zhihu's Q4 revenue reached 644 million yuan, while full-year 2025 revenue totaled 2.75 billion yuan. The company achieved a full-year adjusted net profit of 37.9 million yuan. This marks the first time Zhihu has achieved full-year profitability on a non-GAAP basis, reflecting sustained improvements in operational quality and signaling a new phase of comprehensive profitability for the company.
Zhihu has now delivered non-GAAP profits for three consecutive quarters since Q4 2024. Through steadily enhanced operational efficiency and quality, coupled with continued investment and momentum in innovative growth areas like AI, Zhihu has reached another developmental milestone with its full-year non-GAAP profitability.
In Q4 2025, Zhihu continued to explore business model upgrades and optimize its revenue mix. Paid reading services contributed 334 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 51.8% of the total. Marketing services revenue reached 235 million yuan, representing 36.5% of total revenue. Other businesses, including education, consumer goods, and copyright, contributed 75.2 million yuan, making up 11.7% of revenue. As of the end of Q4, Zhihu's combined cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted cash, and short-term investments totaled 4.45 billion yuan.
Operationally, Zhihu has driven a positive cycle in its community ecosystem through the synergistic evolution of "high-quality content × expert network × AI capabilities," continuously strengthening its unique advantages and professional influence in the AI era. During Q4, the platform saw a continuous emergence of authentic, in-depth, high-quality content across various fields. Overall user activity and engagement depth improved further, with significant increases in new user retention. Meanwhile, paying users remained highly active, with average monthly subscribing members maintaining industry leadership at 12.2 million.
In the paid reading sector, the growth potential for IP monetization extended from premium paid content segments is substantial. Q4 revenue from IP copyrights increased by more than 5 times year-over-year, while the scale of authors earning copyright royalties grew 6 times for the full year. Leveraging its original story platform, Yan Story, Zhihu has established a pathway of "premium content accumulation — structured IP assets — multi-scenario capability reuse." This extends original content from single reading consumption to broader content scenarios, enabling long-term release and compound growth of content value.
In marketing services, Q4 revenue of 235 million yuan showed an accelerating recovery trend, increasing 24% quarter-over-quarter. Benefiting from continuous investment and steadfast execution in optimizing client structure and upgrading commercial products, Zhihu's commercial IP and services have steadily enhanced client appeal and revenue contribution.
Looking forward, Zhihu will continue to invest in innovative businesses and explore growth directions to enhance their positive impact on both the community ecosystem and commercial revenue. The company will accelerate the co-evolution of "high-quality content × expert network × AI capabilities" to continually solidify its ecosystem barriers and influence across the internet. Building on its paid reading business and Yan Story brand, Zhihu will strengthen its industrial layout for AI-powered comic series and unlock the full industrial chain potential of original content IP. Leveraging its strong data advantages and premium IP accumulation, the company will accelerate AI-driven commercial exploration to unlock greater business growth potential.
Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zhihu, stated, "2025 represents a structural turning point for Zhihu. After achieving our first quarterly non-GAAP profit in Q4 2024, we realized our first full-year non-GAAP profitability in 2025. This milestone demonstrates that our transition to high-quality growth has effectively strengthened our business model and profit resilience. In the fourth quarter, we made steady progress in both community ecosystem and commercialization efficiency. Looking ahead to 2026, while consolidating our core business foundation, we will accelerate commercial exploration related to AI. Relying on our vast expert network, trusted content assets, and diverse real-user scenarios, we are building differentiated moats around our community to further enhance Zhihu's strategic position within the broader AI ecosystem."
Wang Han, CFO of Zhihu, added, "2025 marks a structural upgrade in Zhihu's financial health. Through continuous cost control, improved operating leverage, and strengthened expenditure management, we achieved full-year non-GAAP profitability for the first time while maintaining healthy gross margins. Looking to 2026, we will focus on further improving profit quality and scalability by prioritizing the development of higher-margin, more capital-efficient revenue sources. Simultaneously, we will continue to adhere to a disciplined capital allocation strategy, including share repurchases, to support long-term shareholder value."
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