Company: ZHIHF
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000729
Chunk: 26

Company: Zhihu Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 26
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 and regulations could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner materially increases our operating cost and expenses or affects our growth momentum that can be adverse to our business. In addition, some foreign countries are considering or have passed legislation implementing data protection requirements or requiring local storage and processing of data or similar requirements that could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our services.

Table of Contents

Any compromise of the cybersecurity of our online community could materially and adversely affect our business, operations, and reputation.

Our products and services involve the storage and transmission of users’ and other customers’ information, and security breaches or vulnerabilities affecting our or our vendors’ technology, products, and systems could expose us to a risk of loss of this information, litigation, and potential liability. We experience cyber-attacks of varying degrees from time to time, and we have been able to neutralize attacks without significant impact to our operations in the past. We use third-party technology and systems for a variety of reasons, such as data storage and transmission, cloud services, and other functions. Some of such systems have experienced past security breaches, and, although they did not have a material adverse effect on our operating results, we cannot assure you a similar result in the future. Our security measures may also be breached due to employee error, malfeasance, or otherwise. In addition, outside parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, users, or other customers to disclose sensitive information in order to gain access to our data or our users’ or other customers’ data or accounts, or may otherwise obtain access to such data or accounts. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable, or degrade service or sabotage systems change frequently and often are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. If an actual or perceived breach of our security occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures could be harmed, we could lose users and other customers, and may be exposed to significant legal and financial risks, including legal claims and regulatory fines and penalties. Any of these actions could materially and adversely affect our business, reputation, and results of operations.

Our investments in generative AI may not be commercially successful, and we face potential issues in the use of AI in our business operations.

In recent years, we continued to advance our technological development through internal initiatives, highlighted by the explorations on generative AI. In 2023, we launched our first Large Language Model, Zhihait