It takes most people years to land on a signature look. Yinka Ogunbiyi solidified box braids as hers when she was just five years old. That\u2019s pretty early to settle on a beauty uniform, yes, but as a young Black girl\u2014and a Nigerian at that\u2014getting braids felt like a natural part of life. Ogunbiyi enjoyed her regular visits to the salon: She\u2019d settle into the braider\u2019s chair with some snacks and a good show to make the time pass quickly.<\/p>\n
\u200bBut the 2020 lockdown era forced Ogunbiyi (then an engineering student at Harvard) to attempt her own braids. No longer a passive participant in these styling sessions, she realized that the process is \u201creally hard and mechanically repetitive,\u201d she says. \u201cIt took me four days to do small, waist-length knotless box braids.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the second day of braiding, a light bulb went off in her engineer’s brain. Reflecting on how long the process was taking, she wondered, \u201cWhere’s the machine to make this faster?\u201d Ogunbiyi saw similarities between the process of braiding and sewing\u2014a meticulous and repetitive action that could be automated\u2014and began to envision a solution. This experience led to the invention of HaloBraid: a device that assists stylists by finishing the braids they\u2019ve started.<\/p>\n
Excitement about the device spread online after a clip of Ogunbiyi winning the Harvard Pitch Competition went viral in 2025. The win secured Ogunbiyi\u2019s brand, Halo, $75,000 in funding. A year later, the brand is making its first announcement as a company: Its inaugural product, HaloBraid, is launching in September 2026.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Brand<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n The \u201cbraiding robot,\u201d as the internet has dubbed it, is more accurately described as a braider\u2019s assistant that\u2019s attached to their salon chair. \u201cEach braid is started by hand,\u201d says Ogunbiyi. \u201cThe stylist does just a small portion of the braid, then they transfer [the braid] to the HaloBraid device.\u201d How much of the braid makes up that \u201csmall portion\u201d varies, but the stylist needs to at least finish adding in all the braiding hair, since the robot can’t feed in extensions.<\/p>\n Since there is so much variation in styles, the brand isn’t making any time-specific claims about how fast the robot works. However, Ogunbiyi says, \u201cHaloBraid can complete each braid up to five times faster than a stylist.\u201d Ogunbiyi gives one example: With traditional box braids styles that can take six to eight hours, a stylist working with HaloBraid could theoretically bring that duration down to about two and a half to three hours.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"HaloBraid](\"https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/6a395b3ebd96c53050bc3213\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/Copy%2520of%2520Halo%2520Hero%2520Stone.png\"\/)
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