Box. Boho. Knotless. Most Black women understand exactly what those words refer to: braided hairstyles. The thousand-year-old ritual is practically a rite of passage, and many Black women and girls even today sit in salon chairs, up to 12 hours at a stretch, as a stylist weaves patterns into their hair.
But that’s also the problem. For thousands of years, hair braiding has been a manual task. Until recently, that is. Speaking to TechCrunch, Yinka Ogunbiyi recalled when she was stuck alone in her London apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic and tried braiding her own hair: “It took me four days,” she said.
Ogunbiyi, who has an MS in engineering from Harvard as well as an MBA, had previously founded a smart cooking appliance company, and started looking at braiding as a technical problem to be solved.
After years of research, on Tuesday, she launched a robotics startup: HaloBraid aims to help salons speed up braiding with its first device, slated to launch later this year, that acts as a braiding assistant for professional stylists. The company has raised $7 million in a seed round led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm, Seven Seven Six.
Ogunbiyi didn’t go into much detail about the device, as she said there are still patents pending, but she did explain how it works: A stylist starts the braiding and then hands off the process to HaloBraid, which can finish the rest of the braid in seconds. She noted that the product is meant to be gentle on the hair, and that it can help finish both knotless and box braids.
In her research, Ogunbiyi found that people spend an estimated 8 billion hours braiding hair each year. She said in her survey of 2,000 people, 95% said they would get their hair braided more often if it took less time. Stylists, meanwhile, have to work long hours and can face health issues like carpal tunnel or arthritis.
To Ohanian, it was clear that there’s a sizable market and potential for returns for a device that can make braiding easier.
Ohanian is married to Serena Williams, a Black woman famous for some of her braided hairstyles on the tennis court. He also has two Black children who sport braided styles. “I’ve studied exactly how long these braiding sessions take,” he told TechCrunch, and added: “My oldest daughter loves the ritual for the first few hours, but by hour nine, everyone’s ready to call it a night.”
He noted how Dyson has helped transform tooling for hair styles (like with their famous hair dryer) while tech for textured hair remains unexplored “despite a loyal audience that’s eager to spend.”
“This is hardware’s moment,” he continued, citing other investments he’s made, like the rocket company Stoke and the asteroid mining company AstroForge. “An automated braider feels eminently buildable. This product is genuinely differentiated, with a clear go-to-market.”
Other investors in the seed round include AlleyCorp and Bling Capital. The startup will use the fresh funding for product development, manufacturing, and securing salon partnerships.
HaloBraid doesn’t have many competitors in the hair-braiding-device market, with the most notable being Braidiant. Ogunbiyi said one reason it has been so hard to innovate in this space is that hair itself is quite difficult to deal with, especially when it comes to a process as intricate as braiding. In fact, she said hair is one of the “trickiest substrates in the world to manipulate,” and that she had to borrow methods from different industries, from material science to inkjet printing, to make this device.
Armed with fresh cash and validation, now the startup has to make it through launch day. But Ogunbiyi said she and her team of around 15 are already thinking about other devices to create, like one that can undo braids (a process that can often take just 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.