Higgsfield co-founder Mashrabov receives Kazakh citizenship and applies to give up Russian citizenship

Alexander Mashrabov, co-founder of the U.S. artificial intelligence startup Higgsfield, has been granted citizenship of Kazakhstan. Zhaslan Madiyev, Kazakhstan's minister of artificial intelligence and digital development, announced it on Facebook. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decree on October 30. The move matters because Kazakhstan does not permit dual citizenship, so Mashrabov must give up his Russian passport.

Citizenship and its conditions

A published photo appears to show Madiyev personally handing Mashrabov his passport. The minister wrote that Kazakhstan now has one more billionaire and thanked the Higgsfield team for its contribution to the country's AI industry. According to him, the company's product has more than 40 million users.

Bloomberg noted that Kazakhstan bars dual citizenship. A Higgsfield spokesperson told the agency that Mashrabov, who has lived in the United States in recent years, has applied to renounce his Russian citizenship. His LinkedIn profile gives Los Angeles as his home.

The company and its value

Higgsfield uses artificial intelligence to generate video content. Mashrabov and Kazakh machine learning researcher Yerzat Dulat founded it in 2023. It targets creators, marketers and brands producing content for social media and advertising. Forbes reported that annual revenue reached $700 million in August 2026, up from $20 million a year earlier. The company was valued at $5.4 billion in 2026 and recently raised $400 million from investors including Intel, Goldman Sachs, DST Global and Liberty Global.

Mashrabov may hold a 20% stake in Higgsfield, which is why Forbes Russia planned in August to include him on its list of Russian billionaires.

Earlier career

Mashrabov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology with a degree in computer science. As a student he worked at Yandex, helping develop its search engine. In 2018, together with Grigory Tkachenko, he launched AI Factory, a platform that animates faces in photos and videos using AI. Two years later Snap Inc., the U.S. owner of the messaging app Snapchat, bought it for $166 million, and Mashrabov joined Snap.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, several prominent businesspeople have renounced Russian citizenship, including Oleg Tinkov, Yuri Milner, Nikolay Storonsky and Arkady Volozh.