Alex Mashrabov's Higgsfield told Business Insider that its revenue run rate has reached $500 million, turning the AI video creator from a fast-growing consumer app into one of the clearest tests of whether generative media can produce software-company economics.
The number is self-reported, not audited revenue, and Higgsfield is not announcing a closed financing. That distinction matters. Mahi de Silva, Higgsfield's chief strategy officer, told Business Insider that Higgsfield is raising a Series B because of inbound investor interest, after becoming cash-flow positive at the end of May 2026. The round size, lead investor, participating investors, and new valuation were not disclosed.
Still, the run-rate claim changes the conversation around Mashrabov's company. Higgsfield says the figure is up from $50 million in September 2025, implying a 10x increase in less than a year. De Silva told Business Insider that Higgsfield is on pace to reach a $1 billion run rate as soon as the end of 2026.
Mashrabov is not a first-time founder learning video on the fly. TechCrunch reported in January that he previously led generative AI at Snap after Snap bought AI Factory, a startup he co-founded, and that he co-launched Higgsfield with Yerzat Dulat. That background is the throughline: Higgsfield is selling creative control, distribution-speed content, and model orchestration to users who do not want to manage the underlying AI stack.
The financing pitch is profitability, not scarcity
Higgsfield has already raised $150 million from investors including Accel and Menlo Ventures, according to Business Insider. It reached a $1.3 billion valuation earlier this year, according to TechCrunch.
The new Series B process is therefore less about survival capital than about timing. De Silva put it plainly to Business Insider: "We're not hemorrhaging money, but we are raising a Series B because of inbound interest." His follow-up line was the more revealing one: "I'm a fan of the adage that when dinner is served in financing terms, you should sit down and eat."
That is the financing logic of the 2026 AI market. Companies with credible revenue momentum can raise before they need to, especially when investors are trying to identify the next application-layer breakout after coding tools. Business Insider framed Higgsfield against Cursor and Lovable, two AI software companies that have become investor shorthand for fast adoption. Higgsfield wants that comparison to move beyond code and into media.
But Higgsfield's numbers require careful reading. A revenue run rate is an annualized snapshot, not a guarantee of revenue collected over the next 12 months. Higgsfield has not disclosed gross margin, churn, customer concentration, paid user count, or how much revenue depends on promotional creator programs versus repeat enterprise use. For an AI video business, those omissions are not cosmetic. Compute costs, model costs, refunds, and generation limits can all determine whether top-line growth converts into durable margins.
The product bet is a layer above the models
Higgsfield is positioning itself as a workflow layer above base models rather than a pure model lab. De Silva told Business Insider that the main driver of growth is making AI media creation easier for nontechnical users. The company also says it now works with 390 Fortune 500 companies and that commercial advertising accounts for 70% of activity on the platform.
This explains why de Silva pushed back on the idea that OpenAI or Anthropic automatically become fatal competitors by offering image or video tools. "We bring the best out of each model to our customers," he told Business Insider. In Higgsfield's telling, the model providers are ingredients; Higgsfield is the production interface.
That argument is strongest in advertising, where speed, variation, and testing matter more than auteur control. If the 70% advertising-activity figure holds up, Higgsfield is less a Hollywood replacement story than a performance creative story.
Growth has come with trust problems
The same distribution machine that helped Higgsfield grow has also created reputational risk. Business Insider noted that Higgsfield has been criticized for producing AI slop and linked to Forbes reporting on obscene or racist videos and payment complaints.
Business Insider also reported that Higgsfield's own survey found nearly 30% of creators do not disclose their use of AI tools to clients. De Silva rejected the premise that AI-generated media should be treated as uniquely suspect, comparing it to computer-generated imagery in movies. His argument is that audiences have lived with digitally created and manipulated media for decades.
That defense will land differently with advertisers, agencies, creators, and regulators. CGI is usually embedded in a production process with contracts, rights clearances, and named creative responsibility. Generative video can compress that process into a prompt, a style reference, and a distribution post. Higgsfield's challenge is proving that its ease of use does not become a liability for brands that need rights, safety, disclosure, and quality control.
For Mashrabov, the opportunity is clear: if AI coding created the first wave of application-layer giants, AI media may create the next. Higgsfield's reported $500 million run rate gives that thesis a hard number. The Series B will test how much investors believe the number is repeatable, and how much they are willing to underwrite the messy operational work of turning viral creative tools into trusted production infrastructure.