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NVIDIA Backs AI Video Startup Higgsfield as Huang Touches Down in Kazakhstan, Where the $5.4 Billion Unicorn Builds

Business · By: AIReport Admin · 2 hours ago · 👁 10
NVIDIA Backs AI Video Startup Higgsfield as Huang Touches Down in Kazakhstan, Where the $5.4 Billion Unicorn Builds

NVIDIA and TCV have invested in Higgsfield, extending the AI video startup's $400 million August Series B that valued it at $5.4 billion. Jensen Huang confirmed the investment during a visit to Astana on Friday. The company reports $1 billion in annualized revenue as of September and more than 40 million registered users — figures it has not had audited.

NVIDIA has made its first investment in Higgsfield, the AI video and image generation startup that keeps most of its engineering in Kazakhstan, joining growth investor TCV in an extension of the company's August Series B. Neither side disclosed the size of the extension. CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the investment on Friday during a visit to Astana, where he sat for a fireside chat with the country's deputy prime minister and AI minister Zhaslan Madiyev at the alem.AI international AI center.

"The first thing and the last thing is you invest in people, not companies," Huang said, praising founders Alex Mashrabov and Yerzat Dulat for competing against far better-funded incumbents. The extension caps a striking run: Higgsfield's valuation more than quadrupled in about six months, from $1.3 billion in January to $5.4 billion in August.

That August round raised $400 million and was led by DST Global, with Goldman Sachs Alternatives' growth equity business, Tribe Capital, Intel Capital, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital and NTT DOCOMO Ventures participating, alongside existing backers Accel and Menlo Ventures.

The business metrics are all company-reported and unaudited, but they are aggressive by any standard: annualized revenue reached $700 million in August, up from $200 million in January, and CEO Alex Mashrabov said in September the company had passed $1 billion in annualized revenue. The company says registered users now exceed 40 million, that it has added 10 million paying customers since the summer fundraise, and that its platform processes 12 trillion tokens a month across 150 million generations, powering visual production for 390 of the Fortune 500.

Higgsfield's product is a professional-grade creative stack rather than a single model: it offers access to roughly 35 third-party AI video models alongside its own engine, with Diffuse as its mobile-first app and ReelMagic aimed at longer-form video. Mashrabov, a former Snap executive who built the computer vision team behind Snapchat's Cameos, argues a new category is forming because "every brand, studio and creator now needs more visual content than traditional production can supply."

The capital is landing in an increasingly expensive lane. Kuaishou's Kling raised $2.8 billion at about a $15 billion valuation this summer, and Runway raised $315 million at $5.3 billion in February — a round NVIDIA also joined. NVIDIA's Rev Lebaredian framed the Higgsfield bet in the company's usual vocabulary: "AI factories produce intelligence in the form of tokens, and the application layer is where those tokens become useful."

For Kazakhstan, the investment is a proof point in a deliberate national strategy — the government has appointed an AI minister, built the alem.AI center, and leans on the fact that its first unicorn was built by local engineering talent with an average employee age of 25. For NVIDIA, backing the application layer where its silicon already runs is a cheaper way to defend the stack than another $100 billion model-lab commitment. The number to watch next is whether Higgsfield's $1 billion annualized revenue claim converts into durable retention once the flood of marketing spend and model novelty normalizes.

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