Halo, the Cambridge startup behind the HaloBraid braiding device, has raised a $7 million seed round led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six to bring its first salon tool to market later in 2026. That matters because braiding still eats up huge blocks of time in salons, with appointments that can run from 6 hours to 12. Founder Yinka Ogunbiyi started the company in 2023 with David Afolabi after trying to braid her own hair during the pandemic in a London apartment and realizing the job was repetitive enough to engineer around, though not simple enough to fake. AlleyCorp and Bling Capital also joined the round.
What is HaloBraid’s braiding device and how does it work?
The HaloBraid braiding device is a salon-focused braid assistant, not a robot meant to replace the stylist. The braider starts each braid by hand, sets the look and pattern, then hands off the repetitive finishing work to HaloBraid, which is designed to complete the rest quickly while matching the stylist’s style. The tool works for box braids and knotless braids. Halo markets it as gentle enough to avoid pulling and tangling.
That distinction matters. Halo isn’t trying to automate the creative part of braiding, the section where tension, parting, feed, and pattern control really live. It’s targeting the manual stretch that comes after the braid has been started, which is why Ogunbiyi has framed the product less like a replacement worker and more like power steering for a stylist’s hands. Harvard profiled the company and wrote that the system uses machine learning to help deliver a professional-level result.
The customer pitch is pretty blunt. Halo’s site shows a before-and-after salon timeline where a box-braid appointment that might otherwise run until 3 PM can wrap by noon instead. The company also promises more consistency across braids and less strain on hands and wrists. It also promises more capacity for stylists who currently lose entire workdays to one client. Practical wins.
Halo still hasn’t shown much publicly. Patents are pending, and Ogunbiyi has been careful not to spell out the full mechanism. Even so, the pieces already on the record are enough to understand the workflow: start by hand, pass the braid to the device, finish faster, keep the human in control.
Who founded Halo and built the HaloBraid braiding device?
The founding story
Halo came out of a lived problem, which sounds cliché until you hear the detail that matters: Ogunbiyi tried doing her own braids during COVID and said it “took me 4 days.” That pushed her to treat braiding like an engineering problem rather than just a salon ritual. By 2023, Halo Braid had already surfaced at Harvard’s startup competitions, and Harvard later identified Ogunbiyi and Afolabi as the founding pair behind the company.
Why Yinka Ogunbiyi fits this problem
Ogunbiyi isn’t coming at this as a tourist founder. Halo’s materials describe her as a biomechanical engineer, and she holds a BSc, MS, and MBA from Harvard. That mix explains a lot. She’s close enough to the customer problem to understand why braiding can’t be clumsily automated, but technical enough to keep iterating through a hardware build that most founders would probably abandon after prototype 12.
Her earlier startup track record
Before Halo, Ogunbiyi co-founded Desora, a smart cooking hardware company. In Halo’s funding announcement, she’s credited with co-inventing 6 patented smart cooking devices there, and earlier reporting on Desora described her as the startup’s co-founder and CTO. Hair tech and cooking tech aren’t the same business. But she’s already done the ugly part of hardware: prototypes, productization, and getting advanced consumer devices into the world.
Early traction and execution signals
Halo is still pre-launch, but it’s not a deck-only company. The team is about 15 people, the first device is slated to launch later in 2026, and the company has been developing with stylists from the start. By May 2025, Harvard reported 450 prototype iterations; Halo’s site now says the number has crossed 600. Ogunbiyi has also said her research found 8 billion hours are spent braiding hair every year, and in a survey of 2,000 people, 95% said they’d braid more often if the process took less time.
Investors and startup judges were paying attention early too. In February 2024, Ogunbiyi told Poets&Quants that Halo Braid was closing a pre-seed round of more than $1 million and had won $170,000 in non-dilutive funding from competitions and grants. In May 2025, the company won Harvard’s President’s Innovation Challenge grand prize, which came with another $75,000.
The $7M seed round
The new round is a seed financing led by Seven Seven Six, Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm, with AlleyCorp and Bling Capital also participating. Halo will use the money for product development and manufacturing. It’ll also go toward salon partnerships.
Competition and positioning
The direct field is still thin. The clearest named rival is Braidiant, another company building automated tools for textured hair and taking early-access reservations. But Halo’s positioning is narrower and sharper: it’s starting with professional stylists, not a generic consumer gadget, and it keeps the braider in control of the braid’s beginning rather than pretending a machine can own the full service from scratch. The real incumbent is still manual braiding by hand. Slow, skilled, physically demanding.
Why does Halo’s $7M seed round matter?
For Halo, this round is less about vanity and more about crossing the hardware gap. Building a decent demo is one thing. Manufacturing salon-grade equipment that can work on real heads and real schedules is something else entirely. Real customer expectations too.
Ohanian’s interest also isn’t abstract. He told TechCrunch he has “studied exactly how long these braiding sessions take,” partly because Serena Williams is his wife and their daughters wear braided styles too. He added that by hour 9, “everyone’s ready to call it a night.” That family connection doesn’t replace diligence. But it does explain why he sees a textured-hair tool as a serious consumer and professional category instead of a niche curiosity.
The roadmap matters just as much as the round. Ogunbiyi has said HaloBraid is only the first product, and the team is already thinking about other devices, including one that can take braids down faster. If Halo can ship the first tool and prove stylists trust it, the company doesn’t have to stop at braiding. It can start building a hardware stack for textured haircare.
How big is the textured hair and salon market?
The business case here is bigger than one device. Lincoln International puts the global textured hair care market at $16 billion, and textured hair care accounts for 35% of the North American hair care market. It also cites Mintel figures showing the multicultural hair care segment was about $3 billion in 2023 and could top $4.5 billion by 2032. This isn’t a tiny corner of beauty. It’s a large category that still doesn’t get much purpose-built hardware.
Salon spending adds another layer. In Halo’s funding release, Ohanian called salon services a $270 billion industry, while Lincoln noted “textured hair” search volume grew 20% in 2024. Put that together and you get the timing. Consumers are spending, search interest is climbing, and beauty companies have spent years over-indexing on products while leaving tools for textured hair oddly underbuilt.
Will HaloBraid actually ship a breakout beauty hardware product?
Halo’s bet is simple: the artistry of braiding should stay human, but the repetitive labor doesn’t have to. That’s a much more believable thesis than the usual “replace the professional with a robot” story.
Now comes the part that matters. If Halo can get the HaloBraid braiding device onto salon floors later in 2026 and make stylists love it, this round will look smart. If not, it’ll be another reminder that beauty hardware is brutal, even when the problem is obvious.
Read how Fika Jobs raised a $4M pre-seed round to reinvent hiring with AI-led video interviews, helping employers discover candidates through searchable profiles instead of relying on resumes and traditional screening processes.
FAQ
- What funding did Halo raise for HaloBraid? Halo raised a $7 million seed round announced on June 23, 2026. Seven Seven Six led the deal, and AlleyCorp plus Bling Capital also invested, with the money earmarked for manufacturing, product development, and salon partnerships.
- How does the HaloBraid braiding device work? It works as a braid assistant for professionals, not a full replacement for the stylist. The braider starts the braid by hand, then the device handles the repetitive finishing portion while aiming to preserve the stylist’s pattern and reduce pulling, tangling, and hand strain.
- Who founded HaloBraid? Halo was founded by Yinka Ogunbiyi and David Afolabi, with the startup emerging in 2023 through Harvard’s entrepreneurial circuit. Ogunbiyi brings a rare mix of customer intimacy and hardware experience: she’s a Harvard-trained engineer and MBA who previously co-founded Desora and helped invent 6 patented smart cooking devices.
- What market is HaloBraid going after? Halo sits at the intersection of salon services, textured haircare, and beauty hardware. That’s attractive because textured haircare already represents 35% of the North American hair care market, while multicultural hair care was a roughly $3 billion category in 2023 and is projected to surpass $4.5 billion by 2032.
