China's Quora-like question-and-answer platform Zhihu raises USD 270 million in Series E

China's Quora-like question-and-answer platform Zhihu annouced to have raised USD 270 million in a Series E round of funding on August 8th.

The startup will use the captial to accelerate the development of its knowledge content platform, and increase investments in AI technology, content eco-system building, knowledge-related services and commercialization.

Zhihu has accumulated over 110 million answers. From a certain point of view, users are actually the “compilation of lots of questions." By the end of June, the number of registered users had reached 180 million, doubling that of the same period last year. With the continuous expasion of the user community and the complexity of the user groups and preference, the startup is facing more challeges.

In terms of commercialization, Zhihu has established a business matrix composed of business advertising and knowledge-related services. The startup has achieved fast growth over the past year. Its operating revenue had a 340% year-on-year growth in the first half this year. One of its products "Zhihu University" has already got 6 million paid users now.

Moreover, Zhihu will provide "author agent" services for professional and outstanding authors. So authors can know the data performance of their works and enhance the influence of professional content in the community. They can also sign broker contracts with Zhihu, and even earn profits from business purpose writing.

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