The key facts

  • The decree granting Kazakhstani citizenship to Alex Mashrabov was signed on October 30
  • Mashrabov's stake in Higgsfield was estimated at $5.4 billion
  • Kazakhstani law prohibits dual citizenship

A passport from the hands of the AI minister

Alexander (Alex) Mashrabov, co-founder of the AI company Higgsfield, has received Kazakhstani citizenship. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the country Yerzhan Madiev, who posted on Instagram (Meta, the owner of Instagram, has been designated extremist in Russia and banned there) a photo with Mashrabov and the passport handed to him. According to the minister, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the decree granting citizenship on October 30. Madiev linked the decision to the president's 'special attention' to developing artificial intelligence in the country and to 'supporting talent' (Gazeta.Ru).

Who is Mashrabov and why he is called a billionaire

Mashrabov was born in Uzbekistan, graduated from MIPT with a degree in Computer Science, and while studying worked at Yandex as a machine learning engineer. In 2018, together with Grigory Tkachenko, he launched AI Factory, a platform for animating photos and videos using AI, which in January 2020 was bought by the American Snap Inc. — the creator of Snapchat — for $166 million. Mashrabov founded the Higgsfield startup, which develops a platform for generating and editing video and images with AI, in 2023 together with the Kazakh machine learning researcher Erzat Dulat.

Wealth estimate and a legal nuance

In August 2026, the Russian edition of Forbes estimated Mashrabov's stake in Higgsfield at $5.4 billion and suggested he could be included in the list of Russian billionaires; earlier he had already appeared in the magazine's Russian '30 Under 30' ranking. At the same time, as Gazeta.Ru notes, Kazakhstani law prohibits dual citizenship: a holder of the republic's passport is required to renounce citizenship of other countries. Formally, the citizenship decision was made by presidential decree, but sources do not disclose the status of Mashrabov's previous citizenship.