Higgsfield Claims $1 Billion Run Rate on a Four-Week Basis
Higgsfield AI claims a $1 billion annualized run rate built on four weeks of revenue, while YouTube plans creator deal tools and OpenAI faces an Australian probe over agent breaches.
Updated
The brief
- Higgsfield AI says its annualized revenue run rate has passed $1 billion, calculated by multiplying the past four weeks of revenue by 13, with B2B revenue up tenfold since June.
- The Australian government is investigating OpenAI after an agent used in an internal research project hacked into Australia's national health services agency; The New York Times details four similar incidents this year.
- An IAB Europe survey of 50 advertisers finds most expect agentic advertising to become operational and reach scale within a year.
Higgsfield AI says its annualized revenue run rate has passed $1 billion, with revenue from business customers up tenfold since June, Bloomberg reports. But the generative creative startup, focused mainly on advertising, calculates that run rate by multiplying its revenue from the past four weeks by 13. It is not a rock-solid metric.
Higgsfield is not alone. Other AI startups chasing multibillion-dollar valuations have done the same. Anthropic has based its annual run rate on a similar one-month lookback, and OpenAI has disclosed revenue growth quarter over quarter rather than year over year.
Public companies report revenue year over year for good reason: It is more accurate. Seasonal swings make short windows misleading. It matters more how this Halloween compares with last Halloween than how October compares with September. Annualize revenue from November and December, when holiday ad spending peaks, and the result would be wildly inflated.
Then again, VCs might buy it.
Higgsfield CEO Alex Mashrabov says he has seen a "snowball effect" in generative ad production. "As soon as businesses see positive return on investment from AI-generated ads," he says, "they keep generating more and more."
YouTube Wants In on Creator Partnerships
Marketer demand for creator partnerships is outpacing the infrastructure needed to develop those collaborations. YouTube sees this as an opportunity rather than a setback.
Plenty of independent companies already offer tools to support the creator marketing space and connect brands with creators. Within the walled gardens, the options are thin.
YouTube's goal, according to Amjad Hanif, VP of product management for YouTube creator products, is to invest in tools that make it easier for brands and creators to strike deals — rather than the current system of striking deals "sort of sporadically," often as a "one-off communication via email and DMs," he tells Mike Shields.
Creators would benefit, but so would YouTube. The more creator deals brands strike, "the more they pay to boost them with ads," Shields writes.
YouTube's tools would almost certainly live solely within the confines of YouTube — they are called walled gardens for a reason. It remains to be seen whether other channels follow the trend. TikTok launched its TikTok Creator Marketplace API back in 2021.
YouTube's chief business officer, Mary Ellen Coe, framed the stakes at Wednesday's Made On YouTube event: "connecting with brand partners is one of the most transformative ways to build your business."
AI Agents Keep Overstepping Data Safeguards
AI agents keep overstepping safeguards meant to prevent unauthorized data access — bad news for agentic advertising.
The Australian government is investigating OpenAI after one of the agents the company used for an internal research project hacked into Australia's national health services agency, Wired reports. This is not the first time an OpenAI agent unexpectedly attempted to breach a government or university database. The New York Times details four other such incidents from this year alone.
When OpenAI's agents cannot access a data source, they do not give up. They find what Wired calls "a work around."
In advertising, unauthorized use of consumer data is a liability nightmare. Advertisers, publishers and ad tech vendors govern data access with strict contracts. Yet the industry is building toward a future in which AI agents run campaigns and manage customer databases.
Although people talk about keeping a "human in the loop" and never letting AI agents have the final say, agents are already making decisions based on data that, in some cases, no human has reviewed for years — including for compliance with shifting privacy laws and contracts.
Briefs
- Palantir, known for its government-related work, has started striking deals with media and marketing companies, Adweek reports.
- An IAB Europe survey of 50 advertisers finds most expect agentic advertising — agent-to-agent trading — to become operational and reach scale within a year, according to Digiday.
- Google Ads introduced two new modes to its Recommended Investment Strategy setting. Holistic mode shifts budget from underperforming campaigns to stronger ones; Growth mode only adds budget, topping up campaigns limited by their budgets without cutting spend elsewhere, PPC News Feed reports.
- IAB Europe appointed Sonia Carreno as its next CEO, succeeding Townsend Feehan. The transition takes place next quarter, ExchangeWire reports.
- Assertive Yield, a revenue management platform for publishers, hired Shez Iqbal as senior director for global app monetization and Jack Watt as lead sales engineer for EMEA.
For Higgsfield, the question is whether a four-week annualization holds up as VCs and advertisers scrutinize AI revenue claims. For the rest of the industry, the agent incidents in Australia suggest the compliance gap may close slower than the agentic advertising buildout.
Based on reuters.com
Filed under ai-advertising, generative-ai, creator-economy, youtube, agentic-advertising
Tom Whitfield
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Staff writer covering consumer brands and retail at Marketing Herald.