Astana, 23 October. NVIDIA and the US investment fund TCV, an earlier backer of Netflix, Spotify, Facebook and ByteDance, have become new investors in Higgsfield, a video and image generation platform co-founded by Kazakh engineer Yerzat Dulat; the amount was not disclosed, Bloomberg reported.
The money was raised as an extension of the $400m round announced in August, which included Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Tribe Capital, AI Capital Partners, Smash Capital, GFT Ventures and Valor Capital; the company was then valued at $5.4bn. Higgsfield did not disclose its current valuation. The funds will go to global infrastructure and hiring. Registered users exceed 40 million, and in September 2026, 18 months after launch, the startup's annualised revenue at current rates exceeded $1bn.
Higgsfield was founded by Yerzat Dulat, Alex Mashrabov and Mahi de Silva. Its headquarters is in San Francisco, but most of the engineering team works in Kazakhstan: the company has an office in Almaty and Astana Hub residency. The startup began on NVIDIA L40 and A40 graphics processors, moved to the Hopper and Blackwell generations and plans to use the Vera Rubin architecture. Rev Lebaredian, NVIDIA's vice president for Physical AI, called the cooperation an example of computing power turning into finished products.
The investment was announced at the meeting with NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang in Astana by Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev. He said that on visiting Higgsfield's office he learned the working day there starts at 17:00. "You start at 5PM? I want my money back," Huang joked.
What it means: The fastest-growing AI startup with a Kazakh team has gained as investors the maker of the chips it runs on and a fund with a strong track record. This supports its valuation, though the company has not given a new figure.
Who benefits: Higgsfield gets money and status as an NVIDIA partner; NVIDIA gets a stake in a major customer for its GPUs; Kazakhstan's IT sector gets an example of a company with a local team trusted by global investors.
Background: Madiyev called Higgsfield Kazakhstan's first "unicorn", a startup valued at more than $1bn, and said the average age of its staff is 25.
List of sources used: Bloomberg, Nationalbusiness, Vlast.kz, Forbes Kazakhstan, BES.media, Zakon.kz
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
