via TechCrunch
HaloBraid Raises $7M from Seven Seven Six to Eliminate the Six-Hour Hair Salon Appointment
For Black women and girls, words like box, boho, and knotless need no explanation—they signify braided hairstyles, a tradition stretching back thousands of years. Yet, this cultural rite of passage often means sitting in a salon chair for up to 12 hours at a stretch while a stylist weaves intricate patterns by hand. That manual process, unchanged for millennia, is finally getting a technological upgrade.
Yinka Ogunbiyi, a Harvard-trained engineer with an MS and an MBA, knows the frustration firsthand. Stuck alone in her London apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic, she attempted to braid her own hair. "It took me four days," she recalled in an interview with TechCrunch. That experience led her to treat braiding as an engineering challenge.
On Tuesday, Ogunbiyi launched HaloBraid, a robotics startup aiming to revolutionize salon workflows. The company's first device, set to debut later this year, acts as a braiding assistant for professional stylists. While Ogunbiyi kept specific details under wraps due to pending patents, she explained how it works: A stylist begins a braid, then hands it off to HaloBraid's robot, which completes the rest in seconds. The device is designed to be gentle on hair and compatible with popular styles like knotless and box braids.
HaloBraid has secured $7 million in seed funding led by Seven Seven Six, the venture firm co-founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The investment reflects a growing interest in automating time-intensive personal care services.
Ogunbiyi's research highlights a massive market: an estimated 8 billion hours are spent braiding hair worldwide each year. In a survey of 2,000 individuals, 95% said they would get braided more often if the process were faster. Stylists, meanwhile, face long hours and physical strain—including conditions like carpal tunnel and arthritis—which HaloBraid's technology could help alleviate.
For Ohanian, the opportunity was clear. "We're investing in a company that modernizes a $100+ billion industry while empowering stylists and freeing up time for clients," he said. With HaloBraid, the six-hour salon appointment may soon become a thing of the past.