On the afternoon of October 24, during the 1024 Programmer's Day, Zhihu and ModelScope jointly launched the industry's first “White Paper on the Developer Ecosystem in the AI Era.” The report highlights that China's AI market is currently experiencing explosive growth opportunities valued in the trillions. The 9.4 million developers are evolving from merely writing code to becoming “super individuals” who convert AI potential into real productivity. With the rise of “intent-driven development” and a flourishing open-source ecosystem, they are pushing the development paradigm from “coding” to “intent expression,” thereby reshaping products and organizations with higher personal limits and shorter implementation paths.

The white paper demonstrates that the Chinese AI developer community exhibits distinct characteristics of high quality and diversity. Data shows that 93.35% possess a bachelor's degree or higher, with nearly half holding master's or doctoral degrees. Those aged 28 to 32 comprise the main workforce, making up 28%, while senior developers aged 33 to 37 account for 22%, creating a “golden structure” of “experience + vitality.” They are highly concentrated in the internet/software and AI sectors, representing 50.7% and 32.7% respectively. Additionally, there is diversity in organizational forms: 24.27% work in large companies with over a thousand employees, 20.74% are part of small teams with fewer than 50 people, and 13.7% are independent developers, reflecting a more equitable distribution of creative freedom.

At the same time, intrinsic motivations and core anxieties create a paradoxical unity within this group. A significant 63.55% of developers entered the field due to “enthusiasm for cutting-edge technology,” while 59.11% view AI as “an opportunity of the era,” with 25.62% prioritizing “high income,” which ranks fifth. Correspondingly, 79.4% of developers express anxiety over “how to translate technology into value,” and 60.8% worry that “the rapid pace of technology updates is difficult to keep up with,” indicating a deeper demand shifting from “technical implementation” to “value creation.”

The growth and innovation of developers are supported by a robust community ecosystem. According to reports, Zhihu boasts 16 million active learners in technology and AI fields, 3.56 million deep content creators in related topics, and 150,000 ecological connectors, forming a cognitive feedback loop of “perception-source-digestion-application” and serving as an “engine of collective intelligence.” As the largest open-source model platform in China, ModelScope aggregates over 120,000 models and 20 million users, building a complete ecosystem of “model supply-secondary innovation-application landing.”