Amidst the clamor of AI disrupting everything, the question of how companies should position themselves and identify the anchor for their long-term value is a "mandatory question" facing all market participants.
Having just released its Q1 2026 financial results on June 3rd, Zhihu Inc (ZH.US) has provided a high-quality "answer sheet" to this question of value.
Building upon its full-year profitability in 2025, Zhihu is becoming increasingly composed.
In the first quarter of this year, the company continued its steady development trajectory.
The financial report shows that for Q1, Zhihu achieved revenue of 652 million RMB, a sequential increase of 1.3%, with adjusted net profit reaching 17.16 million RMB, a substantial year-on-year increase of 147.2% and a turnaround from a loss in the previous quarter.
The core reason behind Zhihu's ability to consistently deliver strong performance lies in the company's genuine recognition of the value of real-person creators.
Examining the Q1 report reveals that Zhihu continued to explore business model upgrades and optimize its revenue structure.
Paid content and IP operations revenue reached 402 million RMB, up 15.8% sequentially, accounting for 61.7% of total revenue; marketing services revenue was 191 million RMB, accounting for 29.4%; and other revenue was 57.8 million RMB, making up 8.9%.
In today's era of rapidly advancing AI technology and information that is difficult to verify, Zhihu holds an even firmer belief in the irreplaceable value of real-person creators.
From 95-year-old master craftsman Liu Zhendong sharing his personal experience participating in the development of New China's first atomic bomb, to OpenAI scientist Chen Boyuan sharing insights on correcting and optimizing Chinese rendering capabilities for models... on Zhihu's platform, users can see countless such real, professional, and responsible individuals tirelessly sharing knowledge and conveying human warmth.
In fact, building a high-quality, trustworthy real-person community is a commitment the Zhihu team has upheld since its very first day, an unwavering purpose through both the previous mobile internet era and the current AI era.
It is undeniable that Zhihu is often compared to Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, but as a Q&A community renowned for content quality, its own uniqueness, scarcity, and irreplaceability have long been underestimated.
Within the surging tide of the AI era, Zhihu's deep-seated value of real-person co-creation becomes even more pronounced: it reinforces users' public professional identities while providing professionals with a scarce public space to build social credibility and demonstrate professional influence.
It is worth noting that while Zhihu is also investing in AI, it maintains a prudent approach.
Through the synergistic evolution of "high-quality content × expert network × AI capabilities," Zhihu promotes a virtuous cycle in its community ecosystem, continuously solidifying its unique advantages and professional influence in the AI era.
In Q1 2026, Zhihu's community saw increases in both daily active user time and positive user interaction coverage.
In terms of paid user conversion, the average monthly subscribing members in Q1 reached 13.1 million, a sequential increase of 7.9%.
Discussing the relationship between the community and AI, Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan stated during the June 3rd earnings call that it is neither "AI + community" nor "community + AI".
He noted that the significant year-on-year and sequential growth in active user time on Zhihu's platform is primarily due to the continued effectiveness of the company's core strategy, which has consistently focused on building a high-quality, trustworthy real-person community ecosystem.
Zhou Yuan further explained that discussions and exchanges between people within the community have become more active, and this activity would occur even without AI.
What users truly need within the community is not AI itself, but cognitive enhancement, experience sharing, and genuine connections between people.
In Q1 of this year, Zhihu's cumulative content volume reached 972 million pieces, with 4.38 million cumulative topics; daily new high-quality content increased by 18% year-on-year, and AI-related professional content grew by over 30% year-on-year.
The real-person discussions within the community are the foundation of Zhihu's commercialization.
It is precisely these discussions that gave rise to the Zhihu membership business, which can be understood as a natural extension of the community; the development of the membership business further spawned the independent brand "Yan Yan Stories".
Today, Yan Yan Stories' short dramas and AI comic series represent yet another natural extension of the paid reading business.
This is a classic process of "starting from the community, but not limited to it": the community creates content, the content solidifies into IP, and the IP then reaches a broader audience through new technological formats.
As Zhihu's paid reading and Yan Yan Stories content ecosystem continues to develop, the company is gaining a clearer understanding that the commercial value of a quality story is not limited to front-end membership subscriptions but can further extend to various content forms like short dramas, comic series, film/TV adaptations, and game adaptations.
Even the creators of Yan Yan Stories are gradually evolving from story creators to screenwriters and even producers of AI comic series.
Therefore, starting from Q1 2026, Zhihu has merged the copyright and IP revenue previously categorized under other revenue with the original paid membership business revenue into "Paid Content and IP Operations Revenue".
This change aims to upgrade the business from a singular "subscription monetization" model to "full-chain IP operation and development", more accurately showcasing to the market the commercial value of Zhihu's high-quality original content and the full lifecycle of each IP.
Not limited to the online community, Zhihu extends these real-person connections offline.
The "New Knowledge Youth Conference" held in mid-May this year saw attendance exceeding 80,000, setting a new historical record for the event.
It is reported that over 100 Zhihu partners were present on-site; the conference included workshops and coffee chats related to AI and embodied intelligence, as well as numerous activities unrelated to AI, such as handicraft workshops, fitness activities, and food markets.
The event also presented four special awards to honor creators who demonstrated outstanding performance in professional depth, innovative expression, community contribution, and growth potential.
Zhou Yuan believes that people ultimately attend the Zhihu New Knowledge Youth Conference for the sake of other people.
In his view, new knowledge comes from real people, and that is wonderful.
He further explained, "In a time when content can be easily generated, what we still look forward to is personal experience, judgment based on long-term accumulation, the joys and sorrows of the real world, and the irreplaceable experiences and connections between people.
We care about who is giving the answer, why they answered that way, and what kind of life lies behind the answer.
Because every real person possesses irreplaceable value."
Zhou Yuan concluded during the earnings call that Zhihu is a company that believes in long-term goals, and the progress made over the past two years did not come from a scaling playbook.
The company's core strategy has remained unchanged: to deeply cultivate the community, focus on people, leverage AI innovation to better serve and empower people, and continuously drive the business into a virtuous cycle that "starts from the community but is not limited to it".
"Such change does not happen in one quarter, nor is it completed within a year.
The results we see today stem from the persistence of the past two years, and the work we are doing today is laying a solid foundation for the changes in the next three years," Zhou Yuan emphasized.
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