Kanzhun (BZ) Says Flat Operating Headcount Adds 2 Points to Gross Margin

Kanzhun Limited (BZ), the Chinese online recruitment platform, told investors on its August 25, 2026 earnings call that AI has taken over work its operations staff used to do. Because operating headcount has stayed flat since 2023 while users kept growing, employee-related cost as a share of revenue has fallen far enough to contribute about two percentage points of gross margin. Management never measured that saving directly [1].

How Kanzhun makes money

Kanzhun runs a two-sided recruitment marketplace where job seekers and hiring managers talk to each other directly in the app. Almost all of its revenue comes from paid services sold to employers. Over the trailing twelve months, paid enterprise customers grew 11% year over year, revenue per paying customer grew 7%, and revenue in the reported quarter grew 14% [2].

Where the AI actually sits

There are two entry points. The first is the platform's own operations: security review of accounts and job posts, notifications, and customer service are handled by models, jobs that used to grow with the number of users and postings. The second is the product sold to recruiters: AI resume screening, AI candidate sourcing, and AI interviews, the last of which now runs more than 10,000 sessions a day [1]. These features run on an in-house small domain-specific model rather than a general-purpose one, and management keeps R&D spending at roughly a fifth of revenue, so the AI program is not a margin-consuming capex race.

What the cost line shows

Gross margin was 87% in the quarter, up 1.6 percentage points year over year, with cost of revenue nearly flat against 14% revenue growth [2]. Answering an analyst question, management put it more concretely: since 2023, users have kept growing while the number of operating employees stayed stable, so employee-related cost as a percentage of revenue kept falling and cumulatively added about two percentage points of gross margin [1].

What the filings corroborate, and what they do not

Kanzhun's own filings point the same way, and the magnitude is larger than management claimed. Operations headcount fell from 1,029 at the end of 2023 to 722 at the end of 2025, down 29.8%, while revenue over the same span grew 38.9% [3].

That figure proves less than it appears to. All four of the company's functions shrank in 2025, with sales, R&D and administrative roles cut alongside operations, so the AI-displaced share cannot be separated from a company-wide austerity program [3]. The 87% gross margin is also not a new structural level, only a return to the 2021 level, and 2023, the base management chose, happens to be the trough [2]. In the same passage, management named lower app store commission fees as another force pushing costs down, and that has nothing to do with AI [2].

What is confirmed and what is not

AI is genuinely embedded in review, customer service and the recruiting product, operations headcount contracted while revenue grew, and the year-over-year gross margin improvement is in the reported accounts. What remains unconfirmed is how much of that improvement belongs to AI. The two-percentage-point figure is a counterfactual estimate of what headcount would have cost had it scaled with users, not a saving measured in the books, and the annual report's cost discussion says the decline in employee expenses was largely offset by higher payment processing costs [2]. The revenue side is weaker still: the 7% increase in revenue per paying customer carries no AI-attributable amount, and marketing spend rose 38% year over year in the same period [2].

Use case: revenue growth and cost reduction

Adoption stage: scaled

Value released: moderate

Credibility: medium

Sources

[1] Drillr · Kanzhun Limited (BZ) · 2026-08-25 · earnings call

Original: AR PPU output for the quarter increased 7% year-on-year, driven by more efficient and valuable services. including an expanded suite of AI-powered features which encouraged higher customer spending. ... we have been leveraging AI in all aspects of our daily operations, including security, notifications, sales, and marketing, and operating, and everything. But to quantify it, it may be more easier in the cost line. So since 2023, we have been witnessing that alongside with our user growth, Our overall headcount of operating employees maintained stable. So as a result, the employee-related cost as a percentage of revenue continued to go down and helped to contribute around two percentage points of our gross margin.

[2] Drillr · Kanzhun Limited (BZ) · margin and expense verification

[3] Drillr · Kanzhun Limited (BZ) · headcount and efficiency verification