Zig, like C, C++, Ada, and Rust -- but very much unlike Go -- is a low-level programming language, i.e. one that gives you virtually full control over implementation details such as function dispatch and memory management. I would say that Zig is the first (more-or-less) known low-level language that is revolutionary in its design. Rust adopts the C++ (and also, arguably, Ada) philosophy of a low-level language that attempts to appear high-level, and ends up being very complex. I would say that C++, Ada, and Rust are all easily among the top five most complex programming languages in software history. On the other hand, you have C, which is "simple" in the sense that it has few features, but is extremely unsafe.

Zig offers a completely new beast, and I'd say a vision for how low-level programming can be done. It is a very simple language -- a C/C++/Rust programmer can probably fully learn it in a day or two -- and yet it is about as expressive as C++/Rust, and much safer than C++. It does that with a single general partial evaluation feature called "comptime" that replaces, rather than augments, generics, traits, macros, while maintaining their capabilities but being arguably simpler than all of them.

Like Rust, Zig places a very high emphasis on correctness, but its approach is different. While safe Rust eliminates all undefined behaviour, safe Zig eliminates many/most, leaving others up to detection via simple testing. What Zig lacks in sound guarantees, it makes up for in being easy to understand, analyse and test.

Zig also has an exceptionally good tooling story around incremental compilation and cross compilation.

In short, I would say Zig offers a completely novel approach to low-level programming that would appeal to those who value a simple language. While Zig and Rust do target a similar niche, I believe they'd attract programmers with very different aesthetic preferences.