Over the past two years, as the artificial intelligence industry has achieved continuous and leapfrog development, more and more enterprises at home and abroad have participated in this technology competition. Recently, SoftBank Group's Vision Fund invested in Perplexity, a startup focused on the cutting-edge field of “AI search,” with a valuation of up to $3 billion, which attracted widespread market attention. You should know that since it was officially founded in August 2022, Perplexity has been in existence for less than two years, but even so, the latest round of financing has made it one of the most highly valued startups in the global AI field.
I know the meaning of listening to songs. Using the latest trends in the field of AI overseas as a reference, perhaps just as Columbus discovered a new continent back then, the future of human society will inevitably be more closely linked to artificial intelligence. Being in the midst of a new era, how exactly should domestic enterprises reach the “new continent” of the AI era, and even become the builders of the “new continent” in the AI era, has become an era proposition that must be answered.
Regarding this, at the 10th Salt Club New Knowledge Youth Conference held recently, Zhihu (02390, ZH.US), which was one of the first in China to participate in the development of big Chinese models, gave the latest “answer.” At the conference, Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, delivered a speech and made a big announcement of Zhihu's latest AI product “Zhihu Direct Answer”.
It is worth mentioning that “Zhihu Direct Answer” is not the first AI product launched by Zhihu. Going back in history, at the two “Zhihu Discovery Conferences” in 2023 and 2024, Zhihu released the “Zhihai Map AI” big model and the community-native AI function “Discovery · AI Search” respectively. If these are the two key steps for Zhihu to complete from model development to open product application, then the newly released “Zhihu Direct Answer” is the official commercialization of Zhihu's AI search function, and also marks Zhihu's continued strong entry into the “deep water zone” of AI applications with an enterprising attitude.
Discover the latest “answers” to AI's “new continent”
As a highly influential intellectual crossover event, Zhihu's Salt Club New Knowledge Youth Conference selects a number of hot topics for pioneering discussions every year. Meanwhile, at the 10th Salt Club New Knowledge Youth Conference, which opened on June 29 this year, AI unsurprisingly became the biggest highlight of the conference.
The Zhitong Finance App noticed that entrepreneurs and observers in the big model innovation wave, such as Li Kaifu, CEO of Wanwang Smart and Chairman of Innovation Factory, Li Dahai, CEO of Facewall Intelligence, and Zhang Peng, founder and president of Geek Park, all shared their cutting-edge perspectives and opinions at this conference.
And if you want to talk about the most important event at this conference, there is nothing better than Zhihu's launch of a new AI product called “Zhihu Direct Answer.” According to Zhou Yuan, “Zhihu Direct Answer” is not only a new productivity tool, but also a connector for discovering the world. In the future, “Zhihu Direct Answer” will help everyone to better “discover the world with questions” and build a more imaginative, creative, dynamic, and vibrant community around tools and everyone.
As an AI search application product, the launch of “Zhihu Direct Answer” is probably not an accident; it is a “fruit” that Zhihu will inevitably bear after devoting all its efforts and steadiness in the AI field. In 2023, Zhou Yuan publicly stated that Zhihu would “embrace AI”. In this year, Zhihu launched the “Zhihai Map AI” model.
The newly released “Zhihu Direct Answer” marks the official commercialization of the AI search function by Zhihu. According to our understanding, “Zhihu Direct Answer” is based on the real question and answer data of Zhihu creators, and can provide “brief” and “in-depth” answers to generate results according to user needs.
Compared to the pain point where traditional search machines list search results and cannot accurately locate the best answers, “Zhihu Direct Answer” supports “finding content” and “finding people”, which not only shortens the distance between content needs and high-quality answers, but also places more emphasis on content sources and amplifies the circulation effect of community creators and their content.
According to the Zhitong Finance App, there is a natural synergy between the Zhihu community and AI search. Also because of this, in the future, “Zhihu Direct Answer” will inevitably play an increasingly important role in Zhihu's product system: on the one hand, as an important tool to help users ask questions, “Zhihu Direct Answer” can trace the source of content and increase the trustworthiness of the information; on the other hand, by “finding someone” to search for answers, it can also increase the degree of interpersonal relationships, thereby strengthening the interactive experience of the community.
Currently, “Zhihu Direct Answer” has an independent domain name and service portal, and is online on the PC. Users can use it through the “zhida.ai” domain name. It was also revealed that at this stage, “Zhihu Direct Answer” is still continuously learning and evolving. In the future, the product will simultaneously advance in both “technology-driven” and “product-driven” models. At the same time, Zhihu will also promote app development and the introduction of multi-modal capabilities one after another. While achieving deeper integration with the Zhihu community, it will also explore the possibility of foreign cooperation with a more inclusive attitude.
A “new inflection point” in investment value
From a macro perspective, Zhihu's strong entry into AI search applications can actually be considered a microcosm of the world's most enterprising innovative companies exploring AI “new continents” in the current era.
Looking at the latest developments in the AI field, there are opinions in the industry that the entire big model industry can be expected to reduce inference costs by 10 times each year, and at the same time, this will also be a probable event. And once large-scale cost reduction is achieved, the benefits of large models will be reflected in reality, and AI applications will inevitably usher in a wider range and greater explosion at that time.
In fact, the rapid pace of change in the field of AI applications can already be described in terms of thousands of miles a day. Take search engines as an example. As of April of this year, there were 3 search engine applications with over 10 million monthly visits. Among them, New Bing ranked first with 1.55 billion. As a non-native AI application, its high traffic indicates that traditional search engines use AI technology to make progress in enabling original search services; Perplexity ranked second with 73.53 million visits. As a native AI search engine, its high traffic reflects that AI search engines have huge market potential and commercial application prospects.
The capital market is also excited by the positive developments on the industrial side. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, recently, funds under the SoftBank Group led by Sun Zhengyi invested in Perplexity at a valuation of up to 3 billion US dollars in the latest round of financing. According to information, currently Perplexity is regarded by the outside world as one of the AI search engines most likely to challenge Google's position. Even in an interview this year, Nvidia's founder and CEO said that Perplexity is his most commonly used AI tool, and the frequency has reached the point where he “uses it almost every day.”
Using Perplexity's phenomenal performance as a reference, it is foreseeable that after entering the AI era, AI empowering traditional search will be the general trend, and AI native search engines are more likely to reshape the original search pattern. Seeing the panther, the domestic “back wave” represented by Zhihu will also catch up, and the release of “Zhihu Direct Answer” may be a key leap forward in Zhihu's attack on the blue ocean market of AI search.
According to the Zhitong Finance App, compared with traditional search engines, Perplexity's advantages are mainly reflected in four aspects: the ability to understand user problems, the ability to summarize search results, the ability to maintain an index of search results, and the ability to expand user problems.
It should be pointed out that these abilities are also exactly the direction of the “Zhihu Direct Answer” effort. What can be expected is that exciting stories about breakthroughs in technology and business in the AI era will surely continue to unfold in China, and Zhihu is one of the companies that deserve special attention. Following the iteration and evolution of “Zhihu Direct Answer”, the product is also likely to achieve impressive market performance like Perplexity.
Facing the wave of the artificial intelligence era, Zhihu, which has stepped forward, is clearly fully prepared. In the future, as AI products such as “Zhihu Direct Answer” meet growth expectations, the investment value of Zhihu as a technology-driven technology company will inevitably be re-evaluated by the secondary market, and the company's growth prospects are worth investors' optimistic expectations.