Kazakhstan’s first unicorn: Local startup joins the billion-dollar club

Published September 29, 2025 12:48

Farid Veliyev

Farid Veliyev

Business News Correspondent f.veliev@kursiv.media
unicorn, Higgsfield AI
The company previously abandoned a deal with Meta / Photo: Cloud.google.com, photo editor: Milosh Muratovskiy

The Kazakh startup Higgsfield AI has achieved unicorn status, surpassing a $1 billion valuation. Aleksandr Mashrabov, the company’s co-founder and former head of generative AI at Snap Inc., announced the milestone at Nazarbayev University, according to Digital Business.

Higgsfield AI has generated more than $50 million in revenue, officially becoming Kazakhstan’s first unicorn. Mashrabov confirmed this breakthrough, a milestone not reached by any company in the country in the past 15 years. The startup, backed by leading global funds such as Menlo Ventures, which also invests in Anthropic, has gained significant attention.

Founded less than two years ago by AI researcher Erzat Dulat and Mashrabov, Higgsfield AI develops a generative AI model that creates videos from text prompts. Since its launch, the startup has quickly become one of the world’s fastest-rising, drawing millions of users — among them actors, musicians and athletes.

Although the company previously turned down a deal with Meta that could have brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, the founders wanted to remain independent and build the project themselves.

Dulat highlighted that the product has become especially popular in the U.S., China and Japan. He also discussed current revenue and plans to expand into the B2B market.

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