HaloBraid, a robotics startup building an automated hair-braiding device, has raised $7 million in seed funding led by Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, with AlleyCorp and Bling Capital participating. The company plans to launch later this year.
The problem
A single braiding session takes six to twelve hours. Research estimates that people spend a collective eight billion hours braiding hair annually, and 95 percent of respondents in HaloBraid's survey said they'd braid more often if it took less time. The physical toll on stylists — carpal tunnel, arthritis, chronic pain from repetitive motion — is a workforce issue the industry has never solved with tools.
The device
HaloBraid's machine works as a braiding assistant, not a replacement. A stylist begins the braid and hands off to the device to finish it in seconds. It handles both knotless and box braids while remaining gentle on the hair. Founder Yinka Ogunbiyi — who holds an MS in engineering from Harvard and an MBA — borrowed methods from material science and inkjet printing to build the mechanism, noting that hair is "one of the trickiest substrates in the world to manipulate."
What's next
The 15-person team is developing a device to undo braids alongside the braiding tool, with a broader vision to build the infrastructure layer for textured haircare technology. Ohanian called it "hardware's moment" and pointed to HaloBraid's "clear go-to-market" as the reason Seven Seven Six led the round.
Source: TechCrunch
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