HaloBraid raises $7M to replace six-hour salon appointments

For countless Black women, terms like box braids, boho styles, and knotless patterns are more than just hairstyles,they represent a cultural tradition stretching back over a thousand years. Yet this cherished ritual comes with a punishing reality: sitting in a salon chair for up to 12 hours while a stylist meticulously weaves each strand. That exhausting manual process is finally meeting its match.

Yinka Ogunbiyi knows the struggle firsthand. During the COVID-19 lockdown in her London apartment, she attempted to braid her own hair. “It took me four days,” she recalled. Armed with an MS in engineering from Harvard and an MBA, plus experience founding a smart cooking appliance company, Ogunbiyi decided to approach braiding as a technical challenge rather than just a beauty routine.

After years of research, she launched HaloBraid, a robotics startup that unveiled its first device on Tuesday. The tool acts as a braiding assistant for professional stylists, dramatically cutting down the time required. To back the venture, HaloBraid raised $7 million in seed funding led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s firm, Seven Seven Six.

While Ogunbiyi kept technical details under wraps due to pending patents, she explained the core workflow: a stylist begins the braid, then hands it off to the HaloBraid device, which completes the rest in seconds. The machine is designed to be gentle on hair and works with both knotless and box braid styles.

Her research revealed staggering numbers: people spend an estimated 8 billion hours braiding hair each year. In a survey of 2,000 individuals, 95% said they would braid their hair more often if it took less time. Meanwhile, stylists endure long shifts and risk repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel or arthritis.

Ohanian, who is married to tennis legend Serena Williams and has two Black children who wear braids, saw an obvious market opportunity. “I’ve studied exactly how long these braiding sessions take,” he said. “My oldest daughter loves the ritual for the first few hours, but by hour nine, everyone’s ready to call it a night.” He drew a contrast with Dyson, which transformed hair tooling for straight and wavy textures, while tech for textured hair remains largely ignored despite a devoted, spending-ready audience.

“This is hardware’s moment,” Ohanian added, comparing the investment to his bets on Stoke and AstroForge. “An automated braider feels eminently buildable. This product is genuinely differentiated, with a clear go-to-market.”

Additional investors in the seed round include AlleyCorp and Bling Capital. The fresh capital will fuel product development, manufacturing, and salon partnerships. HaloBraid faces few direct competitors, with the most notable being Braidiant. Ogunbiyi explained that hair is one of the “trickiest substrates in the world to manipulate,” forcing her team to borrow techniques from material science and inkjet printing to solve the engineering puzzle.

With validation and funding secured, the startup now faces the challenge of delivering on launch day. Ogunbiyi’s team of about 15 is already looking ahead to future devices, including one that can undo braids,a process that often takes as long as the braiding itself.

“HaloBraid is our first product, but our larger vision is to create breakthrough technology that makes textured haircare faster, easier, more comfortable, and more joyful,” she said.