36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR): 5 FORCES Analysis [Nov-2025 Updated]

You're digging into the competitive landscape for 36Kr Holdings Inc., a major voice in China's New Economy media, and honestly, the picture is complex. While their aggressive cost control-slashing operating expenses by 52.3% in H1 2025-is defintely a win, the external pressures are relentless. You can see it in the revenue dip to RMB93.2 million for the same period, which tells you customers are squeezing hard, and the market rivalry, suggested by that low Price-to-Sales ratio near 0.5x as of September 2025, is fierce. To really understand where 36Kr Holdings Inc. stands against powerful customers, hungry rivals, and easy substitutes, you need to break down Porter's Five Forces right now.

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of suppliers

When you look at the inputs 36Kr Holdings Inc. needs to create and distribute its content-things like platform access, technology, and specialized human expertise-the supplier power dynamic is mixed. You have some very powerful entities on one side and cost-saving technology on the other.

Reliance on major Chinese distribution platforms is a high-power input.

36Kr Holdings Inc. started its business by covering China's New Economy across diverse distribution channels. This reliance on external platforms for audience reach means those platform owners inherently hold significant leverage over 36Kr Holdings Inc. as a content provider. The scale of this distribution is substantial; as of June 30, 2025, 36Kr Holdings Inc. reported an aggregate of 36.6 million followers across these various online platforms, which represented a 9.9% increase year-over-year from June 30, 2024. Specifically, the Company's WeChat Channels followers surged by 69% year-over-year, showing where significant audience concentration lies. This concentration on key platforms gives those platform owners considerable power over access and terms.

Content creation costs are falling due to AIGC adoption, limiting human supplier power.

The power of human content suppliers, like freelance writers or specialized editors, is being actively mitigated by technology adoption. 36Kr Holdings Inc. announced in March 2023 that it was adopting AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content) technology to enhance production efficiency and reduce costs. For instance, the text-to-image function was projected to reduce image generation costs by hundreds of times. This technological shift helps limit the pricing power of human talent for routine content generation and image sourcing. The Company's CEO noted in September 2025 that the 'content + technology + industrial services' strategy was validated in H1 2025, with AI technology being leveraged as an engine for growth.

Operating expenses dropped by 52.3% in H1 2025, showing strong cost control.

The success of cost management, which directly impacts the cost of inputs, is evident in the recent financial performance. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, 36Kr Holdings Inc. achieved significant success in expense control. Operating expenses were RMB55.9 million (US$7.8 million), marking a sharp decrease of 52.3% compared to RMB117.0 million in the same period of 2024. This substantial reduction suggests that either input costs were successfully negotiated down or the volume of input required per unit of output decreased significantly.

Here's a quick look at the key operational and financial metrics supporting this cost environment:

Specialized New Economy analysts hold moderate power due to niche expertise.

While AIGC handles routine tasks, the core value proposition of 36Kr Holdings Inc. remains high-quality, New Economy-focused content. This implies that the specialized analysts who provide unique insights and analysis-the true differentiators-retain moderate bargaining power. Their expertise is niche, and while technology assists, it cannot fully replicate proprietary, high-level analysis required to serve New Economy participants effectively. The Company's strategy involves deepening its content ecosystem moat, which suggests that the quality of this specialized human input remains a critical, and therefore somewhat powerful, factor.

You need to keep an eye on platform contract renewals; that's where supplier power will show up most clearly. Finance: draft the Q3 2025 input cost variance analysis by next Wednesday.

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of customers

You're looking at the pressure points from the customer side for 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR), and the data from the first half of 2025 suggests customers hold considerable sway. When you have a large, diverse base of advertisers and subscribers, and plenty of other places for them to spend their money, your pricing power naturally gets tested. This force is definitely a headwind.

For enterprise customers, the landscape of advertising and marketing channels in China is vast and highly competitive. They are not locked into 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR)'s platform alone. Alternatives are numerous, spanning major ecosystems and specialized platforms. These include, but are not limited to:

• Baidu Ads for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Tencent Ads, covering WeChat, QQ, Tencent News, and Tencent Video.
• Short video platforms like Douyin, which are evolving into content-driven e-commerce ecosystems.
• Knowledge-sharing platforms such as Zhihu, used for establishing B2B thought leadership.
• Xiaohongshu, important for building credibility and word-of-mouth, even for B2B brands.

The financial results for the first half of 2025 clearly reflect this market dynamic. Total revenue for 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) was RMB93.2 million (US$13.0 million) in H1 2025, a decline from RMB102.4 million in the same period of 2024. This revenue contraction points directly to customer pricing pressure or reduced spending volume across the board.

Here's a quick look at how the key revenue segments performed in H1 2025 compared to H1 2024:

Regarding individual subscribers, the power of choice is high. While 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) grew its total followers to 36.6 million as of June 30, 2025, an increase of 9.9% year-over-year, the revenue from subscription services fell to RMB6.4 million in H1 2025 from RMB8.6 million in H1 2024. This revenue drop, despite audience growth, suggests that when content is easily substitutable-as is common in the broader China Media and Entertainment market, projected to reach USD 243.08 billion by 2025-subscribers can easily move to competitors or downgrade their paid tiers, implying near-zero switching costs for the content itself.

For the B2B side, large clients for value-added services can exert significant leverage. The revenue from enterprise value-added services dropped to RMB12.2 million in H1 2025 from RMB13.4 million in H1 2024. Management attributed this decrease partly to a 'proactive and ongoing refinement of service offerings to strategically focus on margin improvement'. This strategic shift often happens when customers, especially large ones like those in the stable partnerships 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) maintains with companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, JD.com, Huawei, and Lenovo, demand better terms or pricing to maintain or increase their spend volume.

The existence of strong alternatives, coupled with the revenue declines in both enterprise value-added services (10.4% drop year-over-year in H1 2025) and subscription services (25.6% drop year-over-year in H1 2025), confirms that customer bargaining power is a material factor influencing 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR)'s top-line performance.

Finance: draft sensitivity analysis on a 10% price reduction for enterprise value-added services by next Tuesday.

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) - Porter's Five Forces: Competitive rivalry

You're looking at a market where scale and platform power dictate survival, and for 36Kr Holdings Inc., the rivalry is definitely fierce. We see this intense pressure from general business media outlets and, perhaps more significantly, the massive tech-backed platforms that dominate content distribution in China.

The stock market's view on this rivalry is pretty clear when you check the valuation. As of September 2025, 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s price-to-sales (P/S) ratio sat at just 0.5x. Honestly, that low multiple suggests the market sees significant competitive headwinds or a lack of pricing power, especially when you consider that half the companies in the U.S. Interactive Media and Services industry trade above a 1.4x P/S ratio.

This competitive intensity is reflected in 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s own top-line performance. While the broader China Digital Media market is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.8% from 2025 to 2030, 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s revenue has been contracting. For instance, total revenues in the first half of 2025 were RMB93.2 million (US$13.0 million), down from RMB102.4 million in the first half of 2024. That's a tough comparison, and looking back, the company posted a 32% revenue decline last year, with revenue from three years ago falling 27% overall.

Still, 36Kr Holdings Inc. is fighting back by trying to shift its value proposition away from just traffic volume. Differentiation is now centered on leveraging AI and expanding into industrial services. This pivot is crucial for carving out defensible space.

Here's a quick look at how the H1 2025 performance reflects this strategic shift amid the rivalry:

The focus on technology is showing up in specific revenue streams. Advertising revenue specifically from their AI/large-model offerings expanded by over 50% year-over-year in the first half of 2025. That's a concrete example of where they are trying to build a moat.

Despite the revenue contraction, the content ecosystem is still growing its reach, which is the foundation for their service expansion. You can see this in the follower growth:

• Followers as of June 30, 2025: 36.6 million
• Year-over-year follower growth: 9.9%
• WeChat Channels followers surge: 69% year-over-year
• "Waves" official account followers expansion: 44% year-over-year
• Views for "WAVES" and 2025 AI Partner Summit: Over 100 million each

The overall Chinese media sector revenue in 2023 hit RMB3.15 trillion. So, 36Kr Holdings Inc. is competing for a slice of a massive but highly fragmented and contested pie, where giants like ByteDance and Tencent are major forces in content discovery.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of substitutes

You're analyzing the competitive landscape for 36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) and the threat of substitutes is definitely a major factor, especially given the shift in how businesses and consumers access information and services. Substitutes here are anything that can fulfill the same core need-information, market intelligence, or B2B marketing reach-using a different method or platform. The pressure is high because many of these substitutes are either free or leverage massive, established networks.

Companies are increasingly building in-house content and direct-to-customer marketing teams.

The trend toward self-sufficiency in content creation means fewer companies need to rely on third-party media platforms for their brand narrative. This is supported by the sheer volume of businesses in China; by March 2025, the number of private enterprises in China exceeded 57 million, accounting for 92.3 percent of all businesses nationwide. Over 40 percent of the newly-established private firms in Q1 2025 were related to new technologies, products, business forms, and models. This growth in tech-savvy businesses fuels the internal capacity to produce content. Furthermore, B2B companies are now using livestreaming for internal training and product launches, adding value through content-driven engagement.

• B2B marketing on Douyin now involves industrial KOLs.
• Brands use AI-powered virtual ambassadors for 24/7 presence.
• Internal training via livestreaming is a growing B2B use case.

Professional consulting and market research firms substitute enterprise value-added services.

36Kr Holdings Inc. generates revenue from enterprise value-added services, but specialized consulting firms offer a direct alternative for deep-dive intelligence. The global AI Consulting and Support Services market was valued at US$14 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach US$72.8 billion by 2030. The Asia-Pacific region, which includes China, is expected to record the fastest Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36.9% between 2024 and 2030. This rapid expansion shows that companies are spending heavily on external, specialized AI and strategy services, which directly competes with 36Kr's high-value offerings, such as its 36Kr corporate Omni intelligence service covering over 7,800 public companies.

Here's a quick look at the scale of the substitute market for enterprise intelligence:

Free, high-quality content from general news aggregators is a constant threat.

General news aggregators, like Google News or Yahoo News, offer a broad, often free, alternative to specialized content platforms. While specific Chinese market share data is hard to pin down, the global trend shows aggregators outperforming traditional outlets in certain segments. The overall digital newspaper publishing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.1% from 2025 to 2029, suggesting a large, accessible pool of general content. The threat is amplified by a general decline in trust for traditional media, pushing users toward fragmented alternative sources, including aggregators and personality-led content.

Direct PR via platforms like WeChat Channels and Douyin is a powerful substitute.

The shift to social and video platforms directly challenges 36Kr Holdings Inc.'s core distribution model. The proportion of people consuming social video for news grew from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025 across surveyed markets. This indicates a massive, engaged audience that can be reached directly by brands or influencers, bypassing specialized media entirely. 36Kr Holdings Inc. itself is heavily invested in these channels, which underscores their power as substitutes:

• WeChat Channels followers surged by 69% year-over-year (H1 2025).
• Followers of the "Waves" official account expanded by 44% year-over-year (H1 2025).
• Video followers exceeded 9.52 million by the end of H1 2025.
• Event IPs like "WAVES" garnered over 100 million views.

While 36Kr Holdings Inc. is successfully using these platforms, their existence means any competitor can also use them to reach the same audience. For instance, the company's total revenue for the first half of 2025 was RMB 93.2 million, with online advertising making up RMB 74.5 million. A significant portion of that advertising spend could easily be diverted to direct brand promotion on Douyin or WeChat Channels, acting as a substitute for traditional media placements.

36Kr Holdings Inc. (KRKR) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of new entrants

When you look at the landscape for new players trying to break into the New Economy information space in China, you see a real tug-of-war. On one side, the cost to just start making basic online content is incredibly low, especially now with accessible AI tools. Honestly, anyone with a laptop can spin up a blog or a basic video channel today.

But that's where the comparison ends, because 36Kr Holdings Inc. has built up significant moats that make replicating their scale and authority a different beast entirely. Their established brand acts as a massive hurdle. As of June 30, 2025, 36Kr Holdings Inc. reported over 36.57 million followers, which is a 9.9% increase year-over-year and marks their 17th consecutive quarter of growth in this metric. That kind of sustained audience accumulation takes years and significant operational spend-they spent RMB 55.9 million on operating expenses in the first half of 2025 alone, even after cutting costs by 52.3%.

This established digital footprint translates directly into market access that a startup lacks. Consider the specific channel penetration:

• WeChat Channels followers surged by 69% year-over-year.
• Followers of the "Waves" official account expanded by 44% year-over-year.
• The "WAVES" IP achieved over 100 million views.

So, while the barrier to entry for content is low, the barrier to entry for reaching the right audience at this magnitude is very high. New entrants face a steep climb to achieve this level of organic reach and brand trust within the New Economy niche.

The regulatory environment in China definitely tilts the scales in favor of incumbents like 36Kr Holdings Inc. that have already navigated the complex licensing maze for media and data services. For any new entity aiming to operate commercially, especially with cross-border implications, the licensing requirements are stringent. Here's a quick look at the regulatory environment that new entrants must contend with, which is far more complex than just setting up a website:

Furthermore, the proprietary data and analytics assets that 36Kr Holdings Inc. has developed create a data moat that is difficult to replicate quickly. This isn't just about reporting news; it's about proprietary intelligence. For example, their AI-driven tools are already deeply embedded with their existing user base. Their "36Kr Corporate Omni Intelligence" platform has already engaged a cumulative user base of 25,000 individuals, including 4,220 paying subscribers as of H1 2025. Also, their AI meeting coverage has documented nearly 1,000 companies to date. A new entrant would need to build this data corpus from scratch, which is a massive undertaking in terms of time, data acquisition costs, and securing the necessary regulatory approvals to handle that volume of sensitive corporate information.

The company's successful pivot into AI commercialization also raises the bar. They launched their Doubao AI agent, which saw a consistent 10% weekly increase in user interactions in H1 2025. This shows they are not just using AI; they are integrating it into monetizable services, forcing new entrants to compete not just on content quality, but on the sophistication and proven adoption of their AI-enhanced offerings.