HaloBraid raises $7M to build the first robotic braiding assistant for hair salons

HaloBraid, a robotics startup that builds an automated braiding assistant for hair salons, has raised seven million dollars in a seed round led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm Seven Seven Six. The device works alongside professional stylists rather than replacing them: a braider starts each braid by hand and then hands off to HaloBraid, which finishes the rest in seconds. The company plans to launch its first product in salons later this year.

Founder Yinka Ogunbiyi, who holds an MS in engineering and an MBA from Harvard, came to the problem during the COVID-19 pandemic when she tried braiding her own hair in her London apartment. It took her four days. Ogunbiyi had previously founded a smart cooking appliance company, and she began approaching braiding as an engineering challenge, studying the mechanics of a process that has remained manual for thousands of years.

The scale of the market is larger than most outsiders would guess. In her research, Ogunbiyi found that people spend an estimated eight billion hours braiding hair annually, and in a survey of 2,000 people, 95 percent said they would get their hair braided more often if the process took less time. A single braiding session can last anywhere from six to 12 hours, limiting stylists to one or two clients per day.

The health toll on braiders is significant. Stylists who braid professionally face elevated rates of carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis from the repetitive hand motions the work demands. HaloBraid’s device is designed to reduce that physical strain by automating the most labour-intensive portion of each braid, completing it roughly five times faster than a human hand.

Ogunbiyi has not disclosed detailed specifications for the device, citing pending patents, but she described hair as one of the trickiest substrates in the world to manipulate. Building the technology required borrowing methods from material science and inkjet printing, among other fields. The startup won Harvard’s President’s Innovation Challenge and its $75,000 grand prize before raising its seed round.

Ohanian’s interest in the space is personal. He is married to Serena Williams, and his two daughters regularly wear braided hairstyles, with his oldest loving the ritual for the first few hours but everyone ready to stop by hour nine. He framed the investment as part of a broader thesis that hardware startups are entering their strongest investment cycle, comparing HaloBraid to his other portfolio companies like rocket maker Stoke Space and asteroid mining firm AstroForge.

He also pointed to Dyson as a model for what happens when engineering talent is applied to overlooked personal care categories, noting that tooling for textured hair remains largely unexplored despite a loyal audience that is eager to spend. AlleyCorp and Bling Capital also participated in the round.

The competitive landscape is thin. The most notable rival is Braidiant, another automated braiding device. But the category has been slow to develop because hair is genuinely difficult to work with mechanically, particularly in a process as intricate as braiding that requires tension control, pattern consistency, and gentle handling across highly variable hair textures.

HaloBraid’s team of roughly 15 people will use the funding for product development, manufacturing, and securing salon partnerships ahead of launch. The company is also thinking beyond its first device. Ogunbiyi said the team is already exploring a product that can undo braids, a process that can take nearly as long as the braiding itself.

Consumer robotics is attracting fresh attention from founders and investors after years of being considered too capital-intensive for venture returns. HaloBraid fits the pattern: a hardware device built around a specific, high-frequency task in a market that technology has largely ignored. The startup’s bet is that the same venture capital logic that once dismissed physical products has now reversed, and that a robot braider serving a 42-billion-dollar global hair industry is a more durable business than another software dashboard.

Whether HaloBraid can make it through manufacturing, salon adoption, and the reality of operating a hardware startup will determine if the device reaches the millions of people who currently endure half-day braiding sessions. Ogunbiyi is clear about the ambition beyond the first product. “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.