Higgsfield raises $400 million, betting creators will make ads with AI

Higgsfield, an AI video startup for social media creators and marketers, has raised $400 million, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. This funding is focused on products that help everyday people create high-quality advertisements and short-form videos without the need for a film crew.

Reports suggest that some of the contributors include Goldman Sachs and Intel, which shows how important it has become for corporate companies to invest in video-making programs that can create content for TikTok, Reels, and paid campaigns.

Why the marketing and creator crowd should care

The funding is more than another big venture round. It is a bet on where advertising content is increasingly being made. Higgsfield says it already has 25 million users, who have generated more than 850 million pieces of content and produce around 2 million videos a day. Much of that activity is happening in the same areas the company plans to target with its new capital: social media content, product ads and agency work.

Economics will probably be the first thing to grab marketers’ attention. In a January interview with research company Sacra, Alex Mashrabov, founder and CEO of Higgsfield, mentioned that nowadays the production cost of broadcast-quality videos is about $500 per minute, instead of $100,000 as it was before, which is a decrease by 200 times. Since the production of a 30-second commercial no longer requires filming, crew, and post-production studios, the economics of the social budgets of brands can change very fast.

What Higgsfield tells its biggest spenders

Mashrabov was transparent about the speed at which that change is taking place among Higgsfield’s largest clients. “We’re seeing customers with marketing budgets over $100 million who turn 90% of their ad creative — their social media ad creative — to be generated with AI,” he commented to Sacra.

The expansion in their customer base, which lies behind the funding, is equally impressive. As indicated by Sacra, Higgsfield attained an annual recurring revenue of $100 million by the end of November 2025, a dramatic increase from the $11 million just six months prior. As mentioned by Mashrabov, who has worked on video and AR effects at Snap before, it is also noted that the company is introducing new features six days a week.

Built to make first-timers look professional

The main idea behind Higgsfield’s marketing strategy for novice creators is very simple: eliminate all the technical skills once necessary for turning an idea into a finished video. According to the company, even someone who has never made a video before can create one in minutes, thanks to a combination of automatic camera logic and pacing, which makes manual editing unnecessary.

Higgsfield’s proposal for new users is simple: make it easier to go from imagination to finished film by removing the technology barrier. Higgsfield claims that new users will be able to create videos in minutes thanks to its automated camera technology that eliminates the traditional editing process.

If users want to be more involved in the process, they can use the Cinema Studio workspace, where they have access to 1,296 camera lenses, cinematic color grading, and many other proprietary technologies and tools to create images, character consistency, and storyboards.

The firm is also focusing on changing creators into clients and profit-makers. As stated by the company, the Higgsfield Earn project has employed more than 10,000 creators and has paid out over $1 million. The company seeks to connect the works created on the platform with contracts involving Fortune 500 agencies, NBA teams, and clothing brands.

It’s a potential cycle that can prove to be fruitful. First, give new users an arsenal of advanced and sophisticated tools, then show them how to monetize the outcomes of their work.

A crowded, well-funded field

Higgsfield is entering a market that is already attracting serious money. In February, TechCrunch reported that rival Runway raised $315 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, putting the two companies at nearly the same level. The Information had earlier reported that Higgsfield was in talks to roughly quadruple its valuation, which the company has said was above $1.3 billion.

The larger creator economy is still working through the extent to which it wants to embrace AI-generated content. According to a Digiday report in May, generative AI had entered multiple creator workflows based on a recent survey, which found that 80% of creators utilized the technology. At the same time, YouTube made a move against low-quality “slop” content by deleting 16 out of 100 of its most-subscribed slop channels.

Higgsfield is confident that the need for quick, cheap, and good-quality video content will overcome the doubts. If that turns out to be correct, AI might not only revolutionize the way advertisements are produced; it could also influence who the producers are.

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