According to a statement by Higgsfield AI co-founder Aleksandr Mashrabov, the startup has reached a valuation of over $1 billion, becoming the first unicorn in Kazakhstan’s history. Mashrabov forecasts that the startup’s annual revenue will exceed $50 million.
Mashrabov announced the news during his speech at Nazarbayev University in Astana, noting that this status was achieved “unexpectedly” and that “no one in Kazakhstan has managed this in the past 15 years.”
The startup was founded in 2023 by Mashrabov and AI researcher Erzat Dulat. Higgsfield AI develops tools for video and image generation, offering users ready-made templates and AI effects.
The startup has been growing rapidly in terms of financing. In April 2024, it raised $8 million in seed funding, and in September 2025 it secured an additional $50 million in a Series A round. According to co-founder Dulat, the service has over 650,000 daily users, most of them from the United States, South Korea, and Japan.
The startup has ambitious plans for the future. In August 2025, Dulat revealed that they had declined a potential deal with Meta*. He emphasized that the generative AI sector is still in its early stages, and as a result, Higgsfield AI will be “at least 10 times more valuable in a year.”
As for Mashrabov’s background, he began his career at Yandex. His previous startup, AI Factory, founded in 2018, was acquired by Snap in 2019 for $166 million. This successful exit led Mashrabov and his partners to work at Snap, where they developed selfie effects for Snapchat.
