A Nigerian-American engineer and Harvard graduate, Yinka Ogunbiyi, has explained why she built HaloBraid.
She described it as a response to the six hours of pain, 300 cost, and long-term physical damage that hairstylists absorb for a process 20 million Americans rely on every eight weeks.
Ogunbiyi is the developer of HaloBraid, the world’s first patent-pending braid-assist robot.
She has raised $7m in seed funding for the device, drawing more than 7,000 salons to its waiting list, the US Mission in Nigeria disclosed in a post on X on Friday.
Her explanation, drawn from a pitch she delivered at the Harvard Innovation Challenge in 2025, resurfaced and began trending online on Friday after the US Mission in Nigeria posted about her on X.
The funding round was led by Seven Seven Six, the venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, with additional backing from AlleyCorp and Bling Capital.
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