Zhihu Q3 2025 Earnings Call - Progress Toward Full-Year Non-GAAP Profitability Amid AI-Driven Ecosystem Strengthening

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Zhihu Q3 2025 Financial Results Conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today’s conference is being recorded and webcast. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma’am.

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Zhihu’s Q3 2025 Financial Results Conference call. Joining me today on the call from the Senior Management Team are Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Wang Han, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that today’s discussion will include forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the actual law.

Additionally, the discussion today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our IR website at ir.zhihu.com. This quarter, Victor Zhou, Zhou Yuan’s AI agent, will once again deliver the prepared remarks in English on his behalf. Victor is due in training, so we appreciate your patience as he continues to improve. Victor, please go ahead.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: Thank you, Yolanda. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Zhihu Q3 2025 earnings call. I am Victor Zhou, and I am pleased to deliver today’s opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zhihu. The Q3 marked another meaningful step toward our goal of achieving non-GAAP break-even on a full-year basis. As our structural optimization initiatives continue to take effect, we further refined our service offerings and balanced commercialization with community health. We also maintained disciplined cost control and improved operating efficiency. As a result, our non-GAAP operating loss narrowed by 16.3% year-over-year in the Q3. At the same time, our community ecosystem continues to strengthen. User mix and engagement improved, while MAUs increased modestly from the Q2. Daily time spent continued to trend higher year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter.

Our users and creators remain highly active, supporting improved core user retention and a steady stream of reliable, high-quality content on the platform. With our high-quality content, expert network, and AI capabilities working in greater synergy, we are accelerating our agentic AI upgrades to deliver trusted and differentiated experiences to users both within and beyond the community. As the AI industry enters a new phase of real-world integration and accelerated deployment, Zhihu, as a trusted source of high-quality content and data upstream of Chinese LLMs and AI applications, is gaining prominence, creating expanding opportunities for collaboration. With rising high-quality content, a highly active base of professional creators, and accelerating AI integration, our community ecosystem radiates vitality. Our competitive moat of trusted content continues to strengthen.

In Q3, daily creation of high-quality content increased by over 25% year-over-year, with professional AI-focused content up by more than 30% compared to the same period last year. As AI technologies and applications rapidly advance in China, Zhihu remains a go-to platform for frontline engineers and researchers for sharing and lively discussions. AI-focused content covers a range of subjects, including deep technical analysis, innovative product applications, emerging industry trends, personal growth, career development, and a growing array of emerging topics driven by rapid AI adoption, from the technical debates between Minimax and Moonshot AI over efficient attention, which sparked heated discussions on Zhihu and highlighted China’s diverse approaches to LLM innovation to the in-depth engineering analysis of new models shared by leading companies. Zhihu has become a trusted source for authentic first-hand exchanges.

These discussions have made our platform a place where AI innovations are first interpreted, validated, and shared. Meanwhile, we continue to strengthen our trustworthy content ecosystem through ongoing improvements to content governance mechanisms and recommendation algorithms. Professional creators are a vital force in our community. In the Q3, daily active high-tier creators increased significantly on both year-over-year and sequential basis. The number of verified, honored creators also grew by 29% year-over-year. Engagement among AI-focused creators also continues to strengthen. Zhihu now brings together more than 60 million continuous learners and 3.56 million proficient creators in science and AI, and 150,000 ecosystem builders. These contributors not only add consistent, high-quality input to our AI content ecosystem but also show significant potential as future service providers for enterprises. Beyond the science and AI, creator activity in humanities and social sciences also remains strong across the platform.

In September, we launched the Co-benefit Co-creation Initiative 共益共创计划 in collaboration with leading institutions such as Alibaba Foundation, Tencent Charity Foundation, One Foundation, and Greenpeace, alongside psychologists, medical experts, and writers. This initiative generated a wide range of high-quality content across disability rights, mental health, environmental protection, and more, drawing over 80 million views. We also hosted the 2025 Zhihu Humanities Season Zhihu Renwenji event, which brought creators together through a blend of online and offline engagement. The campaign attracted nearly 30 influential creators, driving a 7.5% Q2 increase in creator activity in the humanities category and generating 5.82 million topic views, reinforcing Zhihu’s professional influence and cultural relevance. To better support professional creators, we continue to enhance the content creation and distribution experience. Our ideas support knowledge-based expression from high-tier creators and enable more diverse short-form content creation among mid-tier creators.

As a result, average daily content volume and interactions increased by 21.7% and 33.1% Q2 respectively. Our Circles product also continues to serve as a focused space for users with shared interests to gather and interact, with average daily views more than tripling sequentially during the Q2. We also continue to advance our agentic AI upgrades across the community. From a product perspective, Zhihu Zhida evolved into the agentic mode at the end of September, delivering more accurate and smarter search results. Most notably, Zhihu Zhida now serves as a helpful partner for deep thinking and creativity, capable of understanding user intent, performing multi-step reasoning, and synthesizing information across research, learning, and content creation. Our advancements in agentic AI are also amplifying the value of our creators.

By strengthening the attribution of content to trusted creators across the knowledge base and the search, AI-generated responses now cite to verify the knowledge during the reasoning stage, significantly reducing hallucination and improving trust. This strengthens creator influence within the generative AI landscape and gives Zhihu a distinct advantage as a trusted content provider in the emerging AI ecosystem. Now, moving on to commercialization. In the Q3, our commercialization continued to recover on a healthier base, with total revenues reaching RMB 658.9 million in the Q3. We also made notable progress in exploring new monetization avenues by leveraging our core strengths. Let’s take a closer look at our performance by business unit. In the Q3, marketing services revenue was RMB 189.4 million. Notably, the year-over-year decrease narrowed, indicating the bottoming out of our adjustment cycle. We expect marketing services revenue to begin growing on a sequential basis in the Q4.

During the Q4, we made solid progress in both optimizing our client mix and upgrading our advertising products. We continue to optimize client mix by deepening our focus on high-value accounts. With our brand power and expanding commercial IP, we are driving strong uptake from enterprise clients, particularly in technology and other high-value verticals. In late September, we hosted the TechCloud Conference, bringing together AI experts and some of the most influential tech creators from the Zhihu community to explore the latest developments and future applications of AI. The event showcased the technology’s transforming role in everyday life and our unique ability to connect professional content with meaningful brand engagement, further expanding our high-value client base. Through the Zhihu platform, leading companies such as Gree, China Mobile, Huawei, and iFlytek further strengthened their brand positioning in technological innovation and product excellence.

Backed by the credibility of our brand and strong commercial efficiency created by professional discussions across our community, we made solid progress in acquiring new clients across diverse sectors such as automotive, consumer, and healthcare. This Q4, we also further upgraded a wide range of our commercial products by integrating AI more deeply across our portfolio. Our dual ecosystem optimization and product efficiency engines drove a significant increase in positive feedback from clients. For example, we launched the upgraded CCS for idea scenarios and introduced the product to more clients. By offering this short content plus precise scenarios format, it bridges authentic experiences and purchase decisions for brands and merchants. At the same time, it makes content consumption and the decision-making for users substantially more efficient. We are also seeing rising demand from clients to improve brand and product presentation in AI-generated answers.

Leveraging our trusted content and high citation rate across the internet, we launched our new GEM marketing solution in early November. This new solution provides core insights such as visibility across AI platforms and citation analytics. Leading technology clients we have worked with include Lenovo, iFlytek, Vivo, and Proya. We have received a positive endorsement as we help enhance both their SEO and geo-performance for brands and new products. Looking ahead with a healthier ecosystem, stronger client base, and more robust service offerings, we will continue to leverage AI to drive a steady recovery and long-term growth in our marketing services business. For our paid membership business, in the Q3, average monthly paid members increased by 8.1% sequentially to 14.3 million, with revenue reaching RMB 386 million. Our efforts to boost member retention and output through diversified initiatives continue to generate positive feedback from both creators and users.

The Yanyan Story long-form writing marathon came to a successful close in late October after a six-month campaign, generating tens of thousands of submissions in the Q3 alone. This initiative opened up new development pathways for aspiring creators and provided a steady pipeline of content for our library and future IP development. At the same time, voice live streaming saw further improvement in paid conversion rates. We also unlocked further commercial potential for our IP adaptations in China and overseas. During the Q4, revenue from IP licensing maintained its triple-digit growth rate year-over-year and generated high double-digit growth Q2 over Q2. Year-to-date, revenue has nearly doubled compared with the same period last year. In mid-October, Yanyan Story debuted at the Frankfurt Book Fair, showcasing Chinese digital literature on the global stage for the first time.

It also drew coverage from the U.K. magazine, The Bookseller, which noted the new growth path for Chinese short-form digital literature in the international markets. By the end of October, Yanyan Story licensed more than 100 titles for publication across major Asian markets, including Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. A number of works have also been adapted into short dramas for overseas markets and performed well, reflecting the growing popularity of Chinese short-form content abroad. Meanwhile, Yanyan Story has established partnerships with international platforms such as Mobile Reader and GoodNovel to translate works into English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Thai, Indonesian, and other languages, further expanding its international reach. Going forward, we will pursue a diversified set of initiatives to improve member retention and output. By enhancing content supply, membership benefits, and personalized experiences, we aim to strengthen long-term member value.

As AI enables more efficient content creation, the potential for IP development and commercialization will expand, unlocking new growth opportunities for our membership business. Starting this Q4, we are simplifying our revenue breakdown and will begin reclassifying vocational training revenue into other revenues to align with our overall strategy. Other revenues were RMB 839 million, of which we will continue to adjust our vocational training business with a focus on improving operational efficiency and prioritization. Although our vocational training business has been reclassified, we continue to build on its creator-driven foundation with the development of our column product. Designed primarily to serve Zhihu creators, column is intended to enhance the creator ecosystem rather than act as a new commercial growth driver. During the Q4, we enhanced the product by rolling out a PC version and AI tools that help creators generate column descriptions and cover designs.

This enhancement drove sequential growth in both the number of leading column creators and creator user engagement. Monetization models for column creators are also becoming more diversified, with overall GMV more than doubling compared with last Q4. Going forward, we will continue to operate with discipline, maintaining stability while investing prudently for sustainable growth. With the ongoing enhancements in efficiency and steady cost optimization, we are confident in achieving our full-year profitability target. Building on this foundation, we will continue to invest with a long-term view to strengthen our AI capabilities and improve the efficiency of our core operations. Deeper AI integrations will drive greater synergies across content creation, distribution, and monetized on Zhihu. Meanwhile, we will further refine our product and marketing strategies to capitalize on new growth opportunities from high-quality users and enterprise clients.

With a healthier operating structure and ongoing innovation, we are well-positioned to thrive in this next stage of high-quality growth. With that, I will hand the call over to our CFO, Wang Han. Han, please go ahead. Now, I will review the details of our Q3 financials. For a complete overview of our Q3 2025 results, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier today. In the Q3, we maintained disciplined cost management and drove further improvements in operational efficiency. As a result, our non-GAAP operating loss narrowed by 16.3% year-over-year. We continue to invest in areas that reinforce our long-term growth potential, striking a healthy balance between efficiency and investment. Our total revenues for the Q4 were RMB 658.9 million compared with RMB 845 million in the same period of 2024.

The decrease was mainly the result of our continued efforts to optimize revenue mix and focus on sustainable high-quality growth. Notably, the year-over-year decrease narrowed for the third consecutive quarter, in line with our expectations. Our marketing services revenue for Q4 was RMB 189.4 million compared with RMB 256.6 million in the same period of 2024. This decrease was mainly driven by our proactive refining of service offerings and optimization of client mix. Encouragingly, the year-over-year decrease narrowed meaningfully, indicating that our adjustment cycle has bottomed out. Paid membership revenue was RMB 385.6 million compared with RMB 459.4 million in the same period of 2024. While the number of average monthly subscribing members fell year-over-year, they rebounded and grew 8.1% sequentially to 14.3 million. We also continued to enhance retention and output through diversified content and membership initiatives.

Other revenues were RMB 839 million compared with RMB 129 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease was primarily due to the strategic refinement of our vocational training business. Our gross profit for the Q4 was RMB 403.6 million compared with RMB 540.1 million in the same period of 2024. Gross margin was 61.3% compared with 63.9% in the same period of 2024. Our total operating expenses for the Q4 decreased by 19.4% year-over-year to RMB 503.5 million. The decrease was primarily due to a more efficient cost structure and disciplined resource allocation across key operating areas. Selling and marketing expenses decreased by 14.9% to RMB 330.1 million from RMB 388 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease was mainly due to tighter control over promotional spending and optimized personnel-related expenses.

Research and development expenses decreased by 36.2% to RMB 114.4 million from RMB 179.3 million in the same period of 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by continued improvements in research and development, productivity, and efficiency. General and administrative expenses were RMB 59 million compared with RMB 57.2 million in the same period of 2024. Our GAAP net loss for this Q4 was RMB 46.7 million compared with RMB 9 million in the same period of 2024. On a non-GAAP basis, our adjusted net loss was RMB 21 million compared with RMB 13.1 million in the same period of 2024. As of September 30, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, restricted cash, and short-term investments of RMB 4.6 billion compared with RMB 4.9 billion as of December 31, 2024.

As of September 30, 2025, we repurchased 31.1 million Class A ordinary shares for an aggregate value of $66.5 million on the open market. Additionally, we repurchased a total of 22.5 million Class A ordinary shares for an aggregate value of $34.5 million through the trustee of the company as of the end of Q3. Looking ahead, we are on track to achieve full-year break-even on a non-GAAP basis. We will continue to further strengthen our monetization capabilities and pursue new revenue opportunities that leverage Zhihu’s strengths in high-quality content creator expertise and AI-driven innovation. Together, these efforts will reinforce our business resilience and support sustainable long-term growth. This concludes my prepared remarks on our financial performance for this Q4. Let’s turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session.

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. In the interest of time, please ask one question each time. If you have any follow-up questions, please go back to the queue. Thank you. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Thank you. We will now begin with our first question, and this is from Vicky Wei from Citi. Please go ahead.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: 管理层晚上好，谢谢接受我的提问。我的问题是，能否请管理层分享一下公司在AI方面的进展，比如说知乎直达最新的使用渗透率怎么样？我们在AI和社区融合的方面，近期还有哪些进展的体现？ Thanks, management, for taking my question. Would management share some color about the AI progress of Zhihu? For example, the penetration rate of Zhihu Zhida and the progress of the AI integration with the Zhihu community. Thank you.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: Vicky，你好。首先先抱歉一下，我这前两天感冒了，所以今天这个嗓子还没有完全恢复。也希望大家多注意身体。我来回答一下你的问题。直达是我们在应用层最重要的产品之一。它的整体的使用量和渗透率持续是在不断增长的。我们渗透率在三季度的时候已经超过了15%。这个是去年同期水平差不多四倍。这个说明什么？这个说明我们的AI能力在社区的场景下是持续得到提升的。也说明我们AI加上社区的融合升级的方向，它也获得了用户的认可。这也确实让我们有更多的信心，在更多的社区场景里面，以社区的方式继续做AI加社区的体验升级。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you for the question, Vicky. This is from Zhou Yuan, Zhihu CEO. First of all, I would like to say sorry about my weak voice because I didn’t recover yet from my cold. Anyway, I will just start with your first question. As you can see, Zhihu remains one of our key products. Its overall usage and penetration rates continue to increase in the Q3, with penetration rates exceeding 15%, nearly four times higher than the same period last year. This not only reflects the ongoing evolution of our foundational AI capability across the community, but also demonstrates strong user endorsement of our strategic depending of AI+ community. This also gives us very strong confidence to continue upgrading this AI+ community experience updates across more touchpoints.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 我再来说一下近期的我们一些进展和计划。首先在搜索的场景，我们在11月，也就是这个月底，直达会完成对我们整个综合搜索AI能力的一个补充，会为我们全量的用户提供包括直达生成的内容在内的一个新的搜索结果。同时，AI搜索就是在社区内跨主题、跨内容主题聚合，以及社区内热点趋势的总结，也会即将上线。这个也会将我们现在作为二级入口的直达，然后升级到一级入口，进一步提升AI在社区的使用渗透率。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Now, let me just share some recent progress and upcoming plans. First of all, in the search scenario, by late November, Zhihu will fully augment our general AI search capability to include Zhihu-generated content for all users. Additionally, we will soon launch pilot features such as cross-topic content aggregation and community trend summaries. This will formally aggregate Zhihu from secondary entry point to a primary one, further boosting AI adoption across the entire community.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 另外就是在创作场景上，我们现在为社区的创作者提供了更强的AI Copilot的辅助工具。我们在这个季度在创作助手上线了很多AI的辅助的创作工具，比如说智能的标题、内容的纠错、提取导语，帮他们在进行结构化写作和专业引用上面做进一步的优化和放大他们的创作能力。也就是我们这个季度末，这些AI新的辅助的Copilot功能，它的采用率均已经超过了20%。我们现在还会陆续推出更多的，比如像多模态的内容互转、智能排版、短内容辅助生成的所有等这些辅助的工具。这些工具的提供的目的还是去进一步显著地降低中央部创作者的创作门槛，让更多人能够更加轻松地提升他们的创作频次，以达到提升活跃和社交互动的目的。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Second of all, on the content creation side, we are empowering professionals with strong AI Copilot. In this quarter, we launched a suite of AI assistant writing tools for our creation assistant, which includes smart headlines, grammar, and fact-checking, and lead paragraph generation. This will help creators optimize long-form, structured, and expert-level content. By the end of Q3, adoption of these new AI features had already surpassed 20%. Looking ahead, we plan to introduce additional capabilities such as AI-powered multi-model content conversion, intelligent formatting, and short-form content generation, etc. These tools will significantly lower the barrier to entry for mid-tier creators, enabling more users to express themselves effortlessly, to increase posting frequency, creation frequency, and engage more actively.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 还有一点，就是在流通和消费上，我们接下来会让直达的能力进入更多社区里的高频的用户场景，比如说知乎的热搒和各个领域的热点的讨论，我们所涉及的这些AI的早报、评论区、@直达进行趋势总结等等这样的互动。那么这个可以帮助用户更加快速地get信息、参与讨论，从而进一步提升用户对社区使用的便捷度。谢谢。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: In addition, on the content conception and distribution side, we are also expanding Zhihu into high-frequency conception scenarios. For example, AI-powered daily briefing on Zhihu’s training topics and other vertical-specific hot topics, as well as the ability to, as mentioned, Zhihu in threads or to auto-summarize discussions and surface key insights will help users quickly grasp complex conversations and participate more meaningfully. We believe this will further strengthen user engagement and community stickiness. Thank you. Thank you. We’ll now take the next question. This is from Lu Qingshu from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

各位朋友晚上好，感谢管理层给的提问机会。想请问一下如何看待知乎目前的用户生态健康程度，以及外企基础之上，也想请管理层能否分享一下知乎的未来产品形态的改进方向，以及目前的进展如何。 Thank you, management, for the opportunity. My question is, how do you see the current status of Zhihu’s user ecosystem? Based on that, could management share more color on the directions for improving Zhihu’s future product design, and how’s the progress so far? Thank you.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 谢谢你的提问。我们从整体上看，我们现在对当前社区的生态是非常有信心的。生态健康，它其实也不是看单一的指标，而是内容质量、用户的结构和质量，以及创作的动力是否能够形成正向的循环。那么在过去几个季度，高质量内容乘以专家网络，乘以AI能力，那么这个协同发展已经成为了我们社区生态正向驱动的一条发展路线。目前的状态是稳定且持续改善的，也符合团队的预期。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you for the question. This is from Zhou Yuan, Zhihu CEO. We believe overall the community ecosystem is very healthy. We do not rely on any single metric to assess its health. Instead, we focus on content quality, user structure, and user quality, and whether our content creator incentives are forming a virtuous cycle. We have also deployed AI as a core product driver at the strategic level. Over the past few quarters, we have made the synergistic development of high-quality content, multiply expert network, multiply AI capabilities as a core path for driving our ecosystem in a positive direction. From this perspective, our ecosystem is stable and continuously improving. This is fully in line with our expectations as well.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 这里面内容的可信度和专业性是生态健康非常重要的指标。我们在过去几个季度持续投入在内容可信度体系、专家网络的建设和提升上。同时也在打击低质内容和流量，让生态的源头上保持和增强持续正向循环的动力。我们看到过去连续几个季度，每日的日均的新增高质量内容都呈现了双位数的增长。其中AI领域是近期最有代表性的一个领域。我们在过去四个季度连续实现了在AI领域专业内容的双位数增长。在这个基础之上，用户对内容的信任度也保持了稳定提升。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: First of all, the trustworthiness and professionalism of our content are very crucial. They are crucial indicators of the ecosystem health. Over the past few quarters, we have continued to strengthen our trustworthy content ecosystem and our expert network, while also cracking down on low-quality content and traffic to keep the ecosystem healthy at its core and reinforce the virtuous cycle. As a result, we have delivered several consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in daily high-quality content creation. The AI category is the most reflective of this progress, with professional AI-related content recording double-digit growth for four consecutive quarters. On this basis, users’ trust in our content has also continued to increase steadily.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 第二就是用户的结构和用户的质量的提升方面。从去年Q4四季度开始，我们的月活跃用户规模已经连续四个季度保持环比的一个稳定。在这个基础上，日活用户的时长作为一个活跃和留存的很重要的一个结果指标，我们已经实现了连续六个季度的双位数的同比提升。那么知乎的用户在今天依然是以年轻的成长型人群为主，18到30岁的用户占大盘用户的65%以上。其中科技和AI领域为代表的一线从业者成为最具代表的群体。他们在专业学习、前沿探索、兴趣拓展方面都有长期的需求，对内容的贡献度也更高，对生态的正向反馈也更强。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Secondly, our user structure and user quality have improved, and users’ needs across different scenarios have been addressed. As we can see from last Q4, our MAU has remained stable on a sequential basis for four consecutive quarters. Building on that, average daily user time spent, which we believe as a proxy for engagement and retention, has delivered double-digit year-over-year growth for six consecutive quarters. Our users remain mainly young and focused on learning and growth, with user age between 18-30 accounting for more than 65% of our total user base. Among them, frontline professionals in technology and AI have become one of the most representative groups. They have long-term professional learning, frontier exploration, and interest development needs, and contribute more content and provide a stronger positive feedback to the ecosystem.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 第三就是创作生态，创作生态的健康度。我们创作生态其实一直在不断地成长和扩展。头部的专业创作者，我们已经连续七个季度保持环比的不断增长。同时刚才我也提到了，我们会通过更多的AI工具不断降低中央部的创作者他们的创作门槛，然后来提升整体创作者的创作频次，也通过这样的方式让社区的供给能够更加的多样化，活动能够不断提升。总之我想说就是整个生态健康，也就是生态第一，对于整个知乎社区是根本性的。我们未来会长期在高质量内容和专家网络上持续投入，让我们在规模化增长的同时也能够获得持续的保持我们的专业性、用户的活力和信任感。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Last but not the least, the creator ecosystem continues to grow and expand. Output from top-tier professional creators has remained stable over seven consecutive quarters. At the same time, by using AI tools, we are continuously lowering the creation threshold for mid-tier creators and increasing the creation frequency of the entire creator group. This makes the supply side of the community more diverse and keeps social interaction within the community growing. In summary, ecosystem health is foundational to Zhihu. Going forward, we’ll continue to invest in trust content and expert network so that as a community scales, it can maintain its professionalism, vibrancy, and trustworthiness.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 我觉得第二个问题是关于我们对未来的产品形态的一些想法。这里我们有几个判断。第一就是如果以三年为限的话，未来三年人会消费更多AIGC的内容，但同时人和人的交流也会变得更有价值。这个两者会同时成立。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Let me just turn to the second question you mentioned. It’s about our core product going forward plan. Here we hold a few key beliefs. First of all, over the next three years, people will consume more AIGC content. At the same time, human-to-human interaction will become more valuable. We believe both trends will coexist.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 第二个判断就是AI变得越来越强大，人也会越来越有存在感的危机。所以社区所带来的参与感，参与感所产生的社交资本和社交关系就会变得更加的稀缺。对此的需求，就是用户的需求量也会不断上升。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: The second belief we hold here is that the stronger AI becomes, the more people will experience a sense of diminished presence, which means the participation, social capital, and real relationships enabled by community will become increasingly scarce and increasingly demanded.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 第三个判断就是高质量的由人类产生的内容和数据会变成非常高价值和非常稀缺的供给。这个供给它其实是两端供给，就是对于AI的发展和对于人的发展都很重要。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: The third belief here is that high-quality human-generated content and data will become extremely scarce, as well as valuable on the supply end. This supply matters on both ends. It is crucial for the advancement of AI as well as for human development.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 所以接下来直达会深度地对知乎社区功能性的社交需求进行认可。比如说当一个用户要提出问题，寻找资料，找到帮助的这种功能性的社交需求的时候，AI会帮助它极大地去提升效率。直达会极大地去推动社区的公计划。即使是一个第一天使用知乎的新用户，也可以快速地获得很好的体验。那么在另一方面，我们会专注于用户关系型的社交需求的重点的建设和投入。比如被认可、共同成长、身份共鸣等等。我们有这个事情，我们来打造场景和进行建设，为用户提供一个多元的、有温度的、可信赖的真人语境和文化交流的土壤。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Going forward, Zhihu will deeply integrate with our users’ functional social needs. For example, when a user wants to ask a question, search, or look for resources, AI will dramatically raise efficiency. Zhihu will push the community further towards utility, enabling even a first-day user to get a meaningful experience immediately. At the same time, we will double down on the social needs that come from real human connection, things like feeling recognized, growing together, and finding people who share your identity. We want to build these things with users feeling like a sense of belonging in an environment grounded in real people, real culture, and trusted interactions.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 总结一下未来的产品，我们就会围绕 utility 和 identity 来展开。我希望知乎未来可以成为在 AI 时代高质量的人类连接层，我们既提供理解世界的 AI 工具，也成为让人找到共鸣和获得理解的社区。另外我们也计划会把可信内容和专家网络建设成两层基础设施。谢谢。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Our future product direction is built around two pillars: utility and identity. My hope is for Zhihu to become the connection layer for humans in the AI era as a place where people can use AI tools to understand the world, as well as a community where they can find renaissance and understanding from one another. At the same time, we plan to build our trusted content and expert network as two foundational layers of infrastructure. Thank you. Thank you again for your question.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: Thank you. We will take the next question. This is from Daisy Chen from Haitong International. Please go ahead.

谢谢管理层接受我的提问。能不能请管理层分享一下各条线的调整技巧，比如说是否看到收入触底反弹的迹象，特别是说对于广告业务未来如何展望？然后另外能否请管理层分享一下对公司的盈利展望？ Thanks, Madam, for taking my question. Could management update the progress of the adjustments in each business line? Did you see any signs that the revenue has bottomed out or started to rebound? In particular, how do you expect the future of the advertising business? Also, could you share your outlook on the company’s profitability? Thank you.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 感谢这次提问。我是王涵，我来回答一下这个问题。先回答一下盈利展望。在今年的前两个季度，我们已经有了不少盈利。在这个基础上，我们现在已经比较确定我们在 2025 年可以实现知乎历史上首次的 non-GAAP 全年盈利。所以我们在这样的基础之上，我们的 Q3、Q4 也想借着这样的 buffer 和好的时机能够继续地调整和投入。所以大家看到我们 Q3 会可以承受违规一些。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you for your question, Daisy. This is from Wang Han, Zhihu CFO. I will just pick up your second question. Here is a quick take on our profitability outlook. After delivering solid profits in the first two quarters, we now see a very high likelihood of achieving our first full-year non-GAAP profitability in 2025. With that buffer in place, we are using Q3 and Q4 as a window to keep fine-tuning and investing where needed. That is why you can see a small loss in Q3, which is well within what we can comfortably take.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 然后再分别说一下这个收入线的调整的进展。首先就是营销服务，我们上个季度就提到这个 Q3 会是底，Q4 会环比开始重新增长。我们目前看到的状况也是可以有信心维持这个 guidance 不变。而且我们也希望明年也可以目标是做到明年的每个季度都不低于今年 Q3 的这个底。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Let me just walk through the adjustments across our major revenue lines. First, about marketing services. As we mentioned last quarter, this Q3 will become the bottom, and we expect a sequential recovery starting in Q4. What we see now gives us confidence to maintain that guidance. Looking ahead to next year, our goal is for each quarter to stay above the baseline set by Q3 this year.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 然后说一下付费会员。我们仍然在调整期当中。像我们之前说的，每个世界上最顶级的图书馆和口碑最好的书店也都是 fanfiction 和 non-fiction 的区域的。问题就是如何我们能够融合和区分得更好。所以在这个地方上我们还会进行一些尝试和努力。所以付会员的时候，我们现在还不能说现在就是底。但是就算掉，可能也只是 ROI 或者是利润或者续费留存没有那么理想的部分。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Second, about the paid membership. This segment is still in a transition period. As we said before, even the best libraries and bookstores separate fiction from non-fiction. The real challenge here is how to differentiate and integrate them in a way that feels natural to users. We will continue experimenting here. We cannot say paid membership revenue has hit its bottom yet. Even if there is some decline, it will be about products or cohorts with lower ROI, weaker profitability, or less than ideal retention.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 然后职业教育目前已经不亏钱了。但是因为基数也比较低了，所以我们已经合并到了 Other 当中。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Third is about vocational training. This business is no longer a drag on our overall bottom line. Given this relatively low base or small scale, we have now reclassified it into Others.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 整体上来说，大家看到了我们连续盈利了几个季度。Q3 我们有重新违规，但是我们是在能够保证全年是可以实现盈利的前提下，我们就进行了一些调整和投入。也是希望在我们首次的能够实现全年盈利的这个时机，我们可以借此机会能够卸下一些原来亚健康的一些包袱，重新出发。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Overall, you’ve seen us deliver several consecutive quarters of profitability followed by the small loss in Q3. Even so, we remain confident in achieving full-year profitability. With that foundation, we are taking this period to make necessary adjustments and targeted investments. As we approach our first full year of profitability, we also want to use this moment to shed some legacy inefficiencies and to start fresh.

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 我们肯定也不会希望就停留在现在的市场地位，然后就挤出利润。我们仍然认为自己是在创业的路上，只不过刚刚调整到一个相对更健康的状态，重新走适合知乎的路。我们还有充足的现金。但是我们也不会重新回到为了规模去 burn cash 那个老路，而是在 AI 的浪潮下努力探索和发挥知乎在真人、真家、可信内容等方面更加重要，且也很有强的社会意义的角色。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: We have no intention of staying where we are and simply just squeezing out profits. We are now operating from a healthier foundation and getting back onto a trajectory that aligns with Zhihu’s long-term development. Also, we have a very solid cash position, and we are not reverting to the old model of spending aggressively just for scale. In this new AI cycle or in this AI era, our focus is on strengthening Zhihu’s position in real people interactions, expert network, and trusted content areas. These capabilities are becoming increasingly important and carry real social value. Thank you for your question.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: Thank you. We will now take the next question. This is from Jingyi Huang from Guangfu. Please go ahead. Next question is from Jingyi Huang from Guangfu. Please go ahead with your question. Hello, caller, is your line on mute? We cannot hear you. Once again, that’s Jingyi Huang at Guangfu. If you have a question, please go ahead. Your line is open.

你好，能听到吗？

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Yes, we can.

Yes, we can hear you.

好的。

好的，好的。好，我想请教一下，我们对之后的股东回报计划应该如何展望呢？ Could management share some more color about the shareholder return plan and progress?

Zhou Yuan, Founder/Chairman and CEO, Zhihu: 好，感谢您的问题。近两年我们一直是整个中概里面回购股份比例最显著的公司之一。因为我们之前就相信我们是可以做到盈利的。而且今年我们应该让大家看到了我们 deliver 了大概两年前的判断目标，确实可以实现能够盈利。但是知乎现在的市值仍然显著地低于我们账上的现金。那在这种情况下，我们肯定是明显被低估，我们肯定会继续保持回购。且我们应该仍然会是中概里面回购比例最显著的公司之一。好，多谢。

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you for your question. This is from Wang Han, Zhihu CFO. We can see over the past two years, we’ve been one of the most active buyback companies among U.S.-listed Chinese names. That conviction came from our confidence in reaching profitability. This year, we expect to demonstrate that our outlook and the targets set two years ago are being delivered. Even so, Zhihu’s current market cap remains significantly below the cash on our balance sheet. We believe we are super undervalued. Therefore, we intend to maintain our buyback program and expect to remain one of the most active repurchase in this sector. Thank you again for your question.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: Thank you. That concludes today’s Q&A session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Yolanda for any additional or closing remarks.

Yolanda Liu, Director of Investor Relations, Zhihu: Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team directly or Christensen Advisory. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Victor Zhou, AI Agent for CEO, Zhihu: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.