Aug 26, 2026 earnings call — AI expansion and Q2 financial results
Zhihu reported Q2 revenue RMB 690 million and adjusted net loss RMB 10.25 million.
Revenue $0.1B (est $0.1B) · EPS $-0.07 (est $-0.01)
Key quotes
"Through AI search, agents, open platforms and developer tools, Zhihu's content and professional capabilities can reach more user developers and clients beyond the Zhihu app."
"For paid content and IP, revenue reached RMB 426 million, up 4.4% year-over-year and 5.9% sequentially."
"Our advantage is not simply the size of the library, but our ability to continuously generate the new content and identify the strongest titles supported by well-established creators."
Analyst Q&A 3
Second half revenue and profit trend
Q (Thomas Chong · Jefferies): The analyst asked how revenue and profit should trend in the second half and whether business changes and new investments will cause quarter-to-quarter fluctuations.
A: They do not expect the same sequential improvement seen in the second quarter and say different businesses have different operating rhythms. Marketing services are in a structural recovery and may be affected by client budgets; they will strengthen product R&D and performance advertising, keep paid content stable, and validate new capabilities like AI content assets and expert data while investing prudently to improve revenue mix and return to sustainable profitability.
"Looking into the second half, we do not think it's the sequential improvement seen in the second quarter and different business have different operating rhythms." — Yuan Zhou
AI comic dramas and Zhihu advantage
Q (Yi Jing Wei · Citi): The analyst asked for the company's view on AI-generated comic dramas and what Zhihu's advantages are in this area.
A: They are very positive on the AI comic drama market and say AI generation and more creators are making this a new content form, with competition shifting to strong stories and converting IP into virtual content. Zhihu's advantage is its Yanyan Story and broad creator ecosystem that can continuously generate and identify strong titles, which reduces trial-and-error and improves IP development efficiency; they have early validation from third-party data and Q2 production results and will use AI while staying flexible in business models.
"We are very positive on the AI comic drama market and believe the industry is still in a clear growth trend." — Zhang Ronghua (COO)
Expert data solutions business model and edge
Q (Xueqing Zhang · CICC): The analyst asked management to explain the business model for expert data solutions and what Zhihu's advantage is in this business.
A: They describe the team as a data lab that finds model capability gaps, designs training data, task environments, and benchmarks, and then validates improvements, aiming to solve specific model capability problems rather than just deliver data. The model includes customized R&D projects with plans to standardize and reuse pipelines and evaluation frameworks, leverage the Zhihu expert network, build an end-to-end R&D loop, and invest more in compute and R&D infrastructure as long as performance, client relationships, and reuse metrics validate.
"So simply put, we continuously study where models still have capability gaps, identify the tasks they cannot perform reliably and then design the training data, complex task environments and benchmarks around these gaps." — Zhang Ronghua (COO)