Yinka Ogunbiyi Shows HaloBraid’s Automated Hair-Braiding Technology in New Demo

Harvard graduate Yinka Ogunbiyi, creator of the automated HaloBraid device engineered to complete braids up to five times faster.

What if you could get your braids done in a fraction of the usual time and still leave the salon with the style you wanted? A new demonstration of HaloBraid, the automated braiding device created by Nigerian-American engineer and Harvard graduate Yinka Ogunbiyi, gives us a closer look at how that could work.

Designed to help professional hairdressers braid hair up to five times faster while reducing the physical strain that comes with hours of styling, HaloBraid is now being demonstrated in action. And the interesting part is that the machine doesn’t do everything. The stylist still plays an important role in the process.

Here’s how it works. The stylist sections the hair, applies the necessary products and starts the braid by hand before feeding it into the device. HaloBraid then handles the repetitive weaving along the length of the hair, while the stylist returns to finish and seal the ends. This means the machine takes care of a time-consuming part of the process, with the stylist still responsible for creating the final hairstyle.

For Yinka, the idea behind HaloBraid comes from a very personal experience. Sharing the story behind the invention, she said:

My braid story starts at age four, sitting between my mum’s legs as she braided my hair for the first time. Since then, I’ve spent thousands of hours getting my hair braided — and heard the same story from stylists and clients again and again: braiding is beautiful, but it takes too much time and too much strain.

As a biomechanical engineer, I knew there had to be a better way, so we built HaloBraid with stylists from the beginning, bringing together inventors, designers, and builders behind some of the world’s most loved hair and beauty products.

HaloBraid was built for my mum, my stylists, my aunties, and people around the world who know what it means to spend hours in the chair.

The company has also secured $7 million in seed funding, with the investment round led by Seven Seven Six, the venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is married to tennis champion Serena Williams.

With the newly shared demonstration, HaloBraid is showing how its technology works alongside professional stylists, combining hand-braiding techniques with automated weaving to reduce the time and physical effort involved in protective hairstyling.

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