Beyond Zhihu (02390) financial reports: Reunderstanding the long-term value of a content community.

On August 26, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR (02390, ZH.US) released its financial report for the second quarter of 2026. In the second quarter, the company achieved revenue of 690 million yuan, a sequential increase of 5.9% and a year-on-year decrease of 3.7%, with the rate of decline narrowing further; among these, revenue from paid content and IP operations was 426 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 4.4% and a sequential growth of 5.9%, accounting for 61.7%, becoming the main driving force behind the sequential growth of overall revenue. If we shift our focus away from the quarterly revenue and profit data, we can observe that the changes happening at Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR are not only reflected in the financial statements. The content, creators, and professional capabilities that have accumulated in the community over the past decade are being reorganized. At the same time, AI is also beginning to enter more segments of the content value chain at Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR. This was a recurring theme mentioned by the management during the earnings call. Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR's founder, chairman, and CEO Zhou Yuan stated, "At this stage, we are more concerned with whether our core business can remain stable, whether new business can create real customer value and reusable capability, and whether overall returns on investment are reasonable. We will continue to maintain a relatively prudent investment pace, with the long-term goal of improving revenue structure and restoring sustainable profitability." For Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR, what is truly worth paying attention to right now may not just be short-term profit fluctuations or when revenue will resume growth, but rather a more long-term question: how should the value of a content community be measured in the new technological and business environment? 1. The Long-term Value of Content Remains to Be Unleashed In the past, user scale, membership subscriptions, and marketing services have been important indicators for observing the commercialization of Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR. However, as content consumption gradually matures, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR has begun to seek value further within the content itself. For a content community that has been operating for over a decade, the continuously growing scale of content and creators itself is a foundational asset accumulated over the long term. As of the end of the second quarter, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR had accumulated nearly 993 million pieces of content, representing a year-on-year growth of 9%; the cumulative number of creators reached 81.5 million, a year-on-year growth of 3.1%. In the second quarter, the average daily addition of quality content increased by over 16% year-on-year, with AI-related professional content growing by 37%; core users spent an average of about 39 minutes per day on the platform, maintaining overall stability. In terms of memberships, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR had an average monthly subscribed membership of 13.1 million, roughly unchanged from the first quarter; in the first half of the year, revenue from paid content and IP operations was 828 million yuan, nearly flat compared to the same period last year. Despite the lack of further growth in membership scale, the paid content business remains relatively stable. Among them, IP operations have become a new source of incremental revenue. In the second quarter, the number of copyright cooperation agreements for (Yanyan Story) grew by 671% year-on-year, and author copyright earnings increased by 620% year-on-year. As of the end of the second quarter, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR had launched seven high-quality short dramas in collaboration with (Listening Flower Island), with "" (Mistaken Marriage Brings Joy) accumulating over 3 billion views and "" (Sister, He Is Truly My Brother-in-Law) exceeding 2 billion views; additionally, three AI live-action comic adaptations based on the IP have accumulated over 900 million views each. This indicates that the lifecycle of a piece of content is being extended. Once content enters IP development, in addition to advertising and membership revenue, it can further generate value in various scenarios such as copyright cooperation, short dramas, and comic adaptations. This also explains why merely observing the changes in content costs or profit for a single quarter may not fully reflect the long-term value of such investments. Zhou Yuan mentioned in the earnings call that AI is reducing the costs and barriers for literary IP to transform into comic adaptations, short dramas, and other formats. For different projects, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR will choose different models such as licensing, in-house production, or outsourcing based on the economic benefits of the project, while maintaining a prudent attitude towards heavy asset investments. 2. AI Lets Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR's "Expertise" Find New Value Forms This change has also extended to AI. Zhou Yuan noted that AI is becoming a new medium connecting users with content, driving the long-accumulated content, IP, and expert capabilities of Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR into broader applications and commercial scenarios. Currently, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR has begun to explore business opportunities around AI content assets, expert data solutions, AI Works, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR CLI, and more. Among them, the number of clients for AI-related content assets grew by 50% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter; the expert data solutions have already covered areas such as coding, search and deep research, visual reasoning, and intelligent agents. Unlike IP development, the value of AI-related businesses does not primarily lie in the secondary consumption of content, but in enabling the professional content and expert capabilities that Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR has accumulated over the long term to enter new industrial scenarios. For example, in the expert data solutions, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR does not simply provide a large amount of data, but instead, it helps enhance specific capabilities of models through expert participation, training data design, complex task environments, and model evaluations, focusing on the gaps in capabilities of cutting-edge models. Management emphasized during the earnings call that the goal of this business is not merely to deliver data, but to address specific model capability issues for clients, thereby forming reusable capabilities. In this context, the "expertise" accumulated by Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR in the past is beginning to manifest as another form of value. Professional content, real experiences, credible information, and a robust creator system capable of continuously producing such content may all possess new commercial value. Of course, these AI businesses are still in the stage of commercial validation. Zhou Yuan clearly stated, "The company will decide resource allocation based on real market demand, customer value, and return on investment while cautiously validating the sustainability of new businesses alongside stabilizing the core business." This long-term value judgment can also be observed through the company's capital actions. As of June 30, 2026, Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR had a total of 4.424 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted funds, and short-term investments. As of the end of the second quarter, the company had repurchased 41.3 million Class A common shares, with a total expenditure of 77.9 million USD; in the second quarter alone, the company repurchased 6.5 million shares, spending 7.2 million USD. Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR's CFO Wang Han stated during the earnings call that the company will continue to maintain prudent capital allocation and execute share repurchases to maximize long-term shareholder value. Reassessing Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR in the AI era, its value may no longer be simply measured by membership numbers or advertising revenue. If content assets, IP development, and AI-related professional capabilities can gradually form replicable business models, then these long-accumulated resources are also expected to become the new value support for Zhihu, Inc. Sponsored ADR in the AI era. For a community platform with nearly 1 billion pieces of content and over 80 million creators, this may be even more significant than the short-term fluctuations in a single quarter's profit and loss statement.