"One More Billionaire": Higgsfield Co-Owner Receives Kazakhstani Passport

Alexander Mashrabov, co-founder and CEO of the Kazakhstani “unicorn” Higgsfield, has received Kazakhstani citizenship. This was announced on his blog by Zhasslan Madiev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan. “Kazakhstan has one more billionaire!… We want the people creating the technologies of the future to tie their plans to Kazakhstan,” he wrote, noting that the president signed the corresponding decree on October 30.

Higgsfield’s press secretary clarified in a comment to Bloomberg that the businessman has already applied to renounce his Russian citizenship. The Constitution of Kazakhstan prohibits dual citizenship. However, Article 17 of the Law “On Citizenship of the Republic of Kazakhstan” states that when citizenship is granted for exceptional merit, renunciation of another citizenship may occur at a later date, provided that a notarized written application to renounce the foreign passport is submitted immediately.

Alexander (Alex) Mashrobov was born and raised in Russia; his father is originally from Uzbekistan. Mashrobov attended a physics and mathematics high school in Chelyabinsk, then graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). While a student, he worked at Yandex as a machine learning engineer. In 2018, Mashrabov and his childhood friend Grigory Tkachenko launched AI Factory—a platform that adds animation to photos and videos featuring human faces. In January 2020, the American company Snap Inc., which owns the Snapchat messaging app, acquired the startup for $166 million. After that, Mashrabov moved to the U.S.; in an interview, he said that this had been his childhood dream. In 2023, Mashrabov, together with Kazakhstan-born Yerzat Dulat, founded Higgsfield, which now has divisions both at the Astana International Financial Center (Higgsfield Ltd.) and in Delaware, U.S. (Higgsfield Inc.).

The co-founders’ equity stakes are not officially disclosed. In August 2026, Forbes Russia reported, citing expert estimates, that Mashrabov could join the ranks of billionaires, providing several possible estimates of his net worth. Higgsfield denied this information without providing further details.

Higgsfield is a Kazakhstani startup developing a platform for creating videos using artificial intelligence. In late October, it was reported that the company had received investment from NVIDIA, the world’s largest chipmaker, and TCV, a fund that had previously invested in Netflix, Spotify, and ByteDance. The deal was part of an extension of the Series B round, which closed in August at $400 million with a company valuation of $5.4 billion. The company did not disclose the size or valuation of the current tranche. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang personally announced Higgsfield’s investment during a visit to Kazakhstan two weeks ago.

In August 2025, Erzhat Dulat spoke of his intention to “grow” the company to the point of an IPO. Since then, Higgsfield has conducted three rounds of private placements, but no official announcements regarding a public market debut have been made.

In early September 2026, the venture capital fund Frontline One Capital, which had announced its participation in investments in Higgsfield, reported that the IPO would take place in late 2027 or early 2028: Deloitte has already been hired as the auditor to prepare for the offering, and negotiations regarding its organization are underway with Goldman Sachs. According to the authors, Higgsfield’s valuation during the offering could exceed $10 billion.

Shortly thereafter, the Russian investment holding company Finam offered its clients the opportunity to participate in a pre-IPO offering for Higgsfield. Higgsfield, in turn, stated that it “did not authorize such an offer, did not participate in it, and does not endorse it.” Transactions conducted without Higgsfield’s approval are not recognized by the company and “will not be registered upon a liquidity event.”

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor