Halo, a new hair technology company, has raised a $7 million seed round led by Alexis Ohanian’s 776, with participation from Bling Capital and AlleyCorp.
The company’s first product, HaloBraid, is an automated braiding assistant designed to work alongside stylists, helping complete braids in half the time. The product will be live in salons in the fall.
Founder Yinka Ogunbiyi, a Harvard bioengineering graduate, built the system to support stylists, not replace them, positioning Halo as infrastructure for an industry that has historically been overlooked.
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“I’m really interested in cultural technology and solving problems, but the most important thing is I’ve had braids all my life. I’ve probably spent thousands of hours getting my hair braided, and so a lot of what we’re doing here was inspired by that experience,” Ogunbiyi said in an interview.
“The way it works is each braid is started by hand, started by the stylist, and then HaloBraid finishes it, matching what the stylist has done, but finishing it five times faster,” she continued.
With this technology, she hopes to address pain points for both stylists and customers. “We talked to hundreds of people about their experience getting their hair braided, or braiding hair. It takes like six hours to get your hair braided, you get it done every six to eight weeks. It’s hard to scale as a business owner, you can only see like one or two people a day, and you can’t really predict how long an appointment is. Then it’s really painful. It’s painful to sit in a chair for six hours. It’s also painful for the stylists doing their work.”
On why he invested, Ohanian said: “I look for founders that see something broken that everyone else has accepted as fixed. Braiding is a perfect example: It is a process that has not materially changed in thousands of years, despite being one of the most popular hairstyles for millions of Americans and a significant part of the $270 billion global salon services industry. Yinka has introduced a novel technology to a traditionally manual and highly specialized professional service.”
Ohanian, who is married to Serena Williams, added that his interest also comes from personal experience.
“I immediately saw the value for HaloBraid, because I’ve sat through and tried to help during these marathon braiding sessions for my daughter and wife,” he continued. “Halo had a clear vision for how to build this technology, and there was clearly a massive gap in the market, so it was a combination of founder, product, market fit. Especially at a time when it was obvious that robotics was also going to keep getting much better, much faster thanks to AI. It’s shocking someone hasn’t built this business yet, but Halo will.”
Ogunbiyi described Ohanian as a “dream investor.”
“He has intimate experience with this problem, like the people in his family, the people he loves, he’s seen them spend nights getting their hair braided for events and stuff, so I think it’s something that feels close to home. He’s also invested in hardware consumer products, and then founded seminal consumer companies as well.”
As for how she plans to utilize the funds, top of the list is to continue to grow her team.
