The Reality: Most AI Video Tools Are Still Stuck in the Prompt Era. Higgsfield Said “Click-to-Video” Instead.
AI video generation technology has been impressive for the better part of a year, but the UX has been challenging for many B2B use cases. E.g., open Runway. Spend 15 minutes crafting the perfect prompt. Get something almost right. Iterate 47 times. Burn through credits. Still end up with something that looks like an AI-generated mess.
Meanwhile, Higgsfield has attracted over 11 million users in just five months since launch, and they’re not doing it by making people write better prompts. They’re doing it by eliminating prompts entirely.
Here’s a pretty slick video for the new SaaStr AI VC we made in about 90 seconds with a basic english sentence and one screen shot:
Upload a screen shot of your app, tell it in english what you want, and magic happens. A great promo video for almost anything (among other use cases).
What Higgsfield Actually Is
Higgsfield is an AI-powered video and image generation platform with cinematic quality, visual effects, and ready-made presets for creators, marketers, and businesses. But that description undersells what’s actually happening here.
The platform’s core innovation is “Click-to-Video” — users can create cinematic clips with a single click using curated presets that eliminate guesswork. Upload an image. Pick a preset like “Roller Coaster,” “Billboard Ad,” or “Bullet Time Scene.” Click. Done. You’ve got a 5-second video that actually looks professional.
The platform features AI-crafted cinematic camera movements like crash zooms and crane shots that are fully controllable, plus multi-shot, high-quality video generation with advanced effects for professional-grade storytelling.
This isn’t just “easier to use.” It’s a fundamentally different approach to the problem. Where competitors are building better prompt interfaces, Higgsfield is asking: why are we making people prompt at all?
The Numbers That Make VCs Write Checks
Let’s talk traction, because this is where Higgsfield gets ridiculous:
- 11+ million users in five months post-launch
- 1.2 billion social media impressions in the same period
- $50 million Series A led by GFT Ventures in September 2025
- Total funding of $58.2M across two rounds
But here’s the part that really matters: celebrities like Madonna, Will Smith, and Snoop Dogg are using the platform, alongside several major brands. When you’ve got Madonna generating AI content with your tool, you’re not just another AI video startup.
The investor roster reads like a who’s who of top-tier AI investors: GFT Ventures led the Series A, with participation from BroadLight Capital, NextEquity Partners, AI Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, SaaStr Fund and Alpha Square Group. The original seed round in early 2024 was led by Menlo Ventures.
The Team That Ships
CEO Alex Mashrabov previously served as Director of Generative AI at Snap Inc., where he launched the MyAI conversational chatbot that attracted over 150 million users and created viral GenAI AR effects. Before that, Mashrabov co-founded AI Factory, which Snap acquired in 2020 for $166 million. He’s been recognized in the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
This matters because shipping consumer AI products at scale is genuinely hard. Most founders in this space are researchers who’ve never had to worry about DAUs, retention curves, or making something your mom can use. Mashrabov has done this before at massive scale.
Co-founder Erzat Dulat is a Kazakh AI researcher who rounds out the technical chops. The generative models were developed by a 16-person team in less than nine months and trained on just 32 GPUs — a fraction of what companies like OpenAI use, which shows real engineering efficiency.
What Makes Higgsfield Different (Beyond the Obvious)
1. They’re an Aggregator, Not Just a Model Company
Here’s where it gets interesting. Higgsfield pivoted from initially trying to create long, cohesive video narratives to becoming an aggregator of best-in-class Chinese video generation models. Instead of betting everything on their own model, they’ve built a platform that integrates the best available models.
Higgsfield runs on a proprietary engine optimized for speed and cost-efficiency that integrates both its own AI models and top-tier third-party models. Currently, they offer access to models like Sora 2, Veo 3.1, and their own Higgsfield Popcorn image model.
This is smart positioning. While everyone else is trying to win the model wars, Higgsfield is winning the distribution war. They’re where creators actually go to make content.
2. The Preset Library Is the Secret Weapon
Higgsfield Apps offer ready-to-share content in one click, from viral effects to polished commercials, with no editing needed — including templates like ASMR Add-On, Banana Eating, Billboard Ad, Bullet Time Scene, Graffiti Ad, Idol, Mugshot, Mukbang, Packshot, Roller Coaster, and dozens more.
These aren’t generic “text-to-video” prompts. They’re culturally-tuned, trend-aware templates that actually understand what performs on social media. That knowledge — what makes content go viral, what brands need, what creators want — that’s the moat.
3. Mobile-First, Not Desktop-First
Mashrabov says Higgsfield stands out by prioritizing iOS and Android apps instead of desktop workflows, enabling creators to create compelling social media content anytime and anywhere. This seems obvious in hindsight but almost no one else is doing it. Runway, Pika, even OpenAI’s Sora — they’re all desktop-first experiences.
Higgsfield launched with mobile apps. Because that’s where the creators are. That’s where the content gets made. That’s where the distribution happens.
4. Enterprise Is Already in the Roadmap
The Series A funding will be used to expand Higgsfield’s enterprise platform, grow the engineering team, and accelerate go-to-market strategy. They’re not waiting to add enterprise features later. The platform is already designed to meet the performance and control standards required by large organizations.
The PLG-to-enterprise playbook: get millions of creators hooked on the free/consumer product, then upsell their employers on the enterprise version with collaboration, brand controls, and volume pricing. Mashrabov envisions marketers paying fees or subscriptions for premium features, volume, or large-scale campaigns.
What They’re Actually Building
Beyond the current product, the vision is bigger. CEO Mashrabov says “For decades, creativity was gated, intermediaries dictated the pace, tools, and economics. The Higgsfield platform requires zero cognitive load and dismantles the model of cumbersome traditional production processes. We are the platform that makes creativity move at the speed of culture”.
Additional features include Draw-to-Video that enables users to sketch ideas and instantly convert them to animated content, tools for creating user-generated content-style ads, and rapid A/B testing capabilities. They’re also building Higgsfield Speak, which enables creation of digital ambassadors — realistic virtual characters that can express emotion and build trust with audiences.
The long game here is obvious: become the operating system for short-form video production. Not just generation, but the entire workflow — from idea to export to distribution.
What B2B Execs Can Actually Do With This (And Why It Matters)
Here’s where Higgsfield gets really interesting for SaaS companies: you can create amazing short videos (5-20 seconds) to demo and hype your product from just a screenshot of your app.
Think about how much time and money you currently spend on product marketing videos:
- Hire a video agency or freelancer: $3K-$10K per video, 2-4 weeks turnaround
- DIY with your marketing team: 5-10 hours per video between scripting, recording, editing
- Use screen recording tools: Still need editing, transitions, effects — hours of work
Higgsfield collapses that to minutes. Upload a screenshot of your dashboard. Pick a preset like “Billboard Ad” or “Product Showcase.” Get a cinematic video with camera movements, effects, and polish. Done.
Real use cases for B2B:
- Product launches: Create a hype video from your new feature screenshot in under 5 minutes
- Social proof: Turn customer testimonials or case study screenshots into engaging video content
- Sales enablement: Give your SDRs fresh, eye-catching product demos that don’t require screen recording sessions
- Event marketing: Generate dozens of variations for A/B testing in the time it used to take to make one video
- Investor updates: Create polished product progress videos without hiring a production team
The time savings are massive. Instead of waiting weeks for video assets, your marketing team can generate, test, and iterate on video content in the same day. Instead of one carefully-crafted video, you can create 20 variations and see what converts.
This is especially powerful for small marketing teams at early-stage SaaS companies. You don’t have a video person on staff. Your designer is already overwhelmed. Your CEO doesn’t want to be on camera. Higgsfield gives you a way to create professional video content without any of that.
The Market They’re Actually Going After
Higgsfield is targeting the short-form video market, estimated to be worth $600 billion. More specifically, the U.S. video creation market alone is worth $200 billion annually.
This isn’t about replacing Hollywood. It’s about replacing the $600B that gets spent creating TikToks, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, product demos, ads, and every other form of short-form video content. CMOs and creative directors constantly tell them they need to optimize content production budgets and shorten timelines while still delivering impactful content.
The wedge is social media creators and marketers. The expansion is B2B marketing teams who need to ship video content fast. The end game is replacing Adobe Premiere for an entire generation of creators who never learned how to use it in the first place.
The Investor Thesis
Why are smart investors writing $50M+ checks for this company?
Jeff Herbst from GFT Ventures, who sits on Higgsfield’s board, said: “I spent 20 years at NVIDIA helping to lay the infrastructure, expand the developer ecosystem, and create the platform that today powers AI-native applications like Higgsfield. That journey ultimately paved the path for NVIDIA to become the world’s most valuable company. Higgsfield now stands at an equally profound inflection point, where application-layer AI, the creator economy, and enterprise demand converge”.
Amy Wu from Menlo Ventures said: “At Menlo, we bet on category creators like Anthropic, and Higgsfield is pioneering the future of video creation. The magic of their product is combining accessibility with professional quality and controllability, speed with cost effectiveness”.
Avie Tevanian from NextEquity Partners, who was at Apple during the iPhone era, said: “During my time at Apple, we drove many breakout moments like the iPhone. Generative AI is no less transformative, and Higgsfield is the backbone of tomorrow’s video intelligence”.
These aren’t generic VC quotes. These are investors who’ve seen category-defining companies before, and they’re seeing the same patterns here.
The Skeptical Take (Because There Always Is One)
Let’s be honest about the challenges:
Critics point out that Higgsfield is essentially a highly effective marketing layer on top of Chinese AI models, with no real technological competitive advantage. The underlying technology — video generation models — is increasingly commoditized. The most likely outcome, according to some observers, is a profitable exit, especially given Mashrabov’s history of selling AI Factory to Snapchat for $165 million.
Technical reviews show limitations: clips are limited to 5 seconds maximum, output is currently 720p only, and monthly credits don’t roll over. Performance benchmarks reveal that while Higgsfield can produce decent results, it struggles with temporal consistency over time, complex prompts, and sustained motion quality.
But here’s the counterargument: distribution beats technology. Betamax was better than VHS. The best video generation model in 2025 might not matter if no one’s using it. Higgsfield has distribution. They have users. They have celebrities and brands. They have the preset library and the cultural understanding of what actually works.
The question isn’t whether their current models are best-in-class. The question is whether they can maintain their distribution advantage as model quality commoditizes. And with 11M users in five months, that’s looking pretty defensible.
What This Means for B2B Founders
The Higgsfield playbook is worth studying:
1. UX Trumps Technology in AI Apps Higgsfield isn’t winning because they have the best models. They’re winning because they made video generation actually usable. The lesson: your AI app’s competitive advantage might not be your model. It might be that you’re the only one who figured out the UX.
2. Consumer + Enterprise Isn’t Either/Or They launched consumer. Got massive traction. Now they’re building enterprise. This works if — and only if — you actually nail consumer first. Most companies try to do both and end up with neither.
3. Mobile-First Actually Matters In 2025, it’s still shocking how many AI tools are desktop-only. If your users are creating content for social media, meet them where they are. This seems obvious but almost nobody does it.
4. Presets > Prompts for Most Users The dirty secret of AI is that most people don’t want to prompt. They want presets. They want templates. They want one-click solutions. Higgsfield gets this. Most AI companies don’t.
5. Aggregate, Don’t Innovate (Sometimes) Higgsfield made a rapid and crucial pivot from trying to build their own long-form video model to aggregating best-in-class Chinese video generation models. Sometimes the smartest move is to be the interface layer, not the infrastructure layer.
The AI Video That Works The Way We Work
Higgsfield represents a decisive break from traditional video production, positioning itself as the backbone of synthetic media and AI video reasoning. They’ve built what everyone else in AI video should have built: a product people actually want to use.
The metrics are bonkers. The team has done this before. The investors are legit. The product solves a real problem in a genuinely better way. And they’re scaling faster than anyone else in the category.
Will they become the Canva of video? The Adobe of the AI era? Or will they get acquired by Meta/Snap/TikTok before we find out? All three outcomes would be wins. But if I had to bet, I’d bet on the team that’s already gotten 11 million people to use their product in five months.
Check out Higgsfield at higgsfield.ai
