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Nigerian engineer Yinka Ogunbiyi's HaloBraid wins $75,000 Harvard Innovation prize. Nigerian-born Harvard alum Yinka Ogunbiyi won the $75,000 grand prize at the 2025 Harvard President's Innovation Challenge with HaloBraid, an automated braid-assist device engineered to complete braids up to five times faster. 1 hour ago October 8, 2026 Harvard graduate Yinka Ogunbiyi, creator of the automated HaloBraid device engineered to complete braids up to five times faster. Photo Credit: Yinka Ogunbiyi/Instagram Nigerian-born engineer and Harvard graduate Yinka Ogunbiyi has taken the technology and beauty worlds by storm with HaloBraid, an automated braid-assist device designed to complete hand-started braids up to five times faster. Created alongside her co-founder, David Afolabi, HaloBraid recently won top honours and the $75,000 grand prize in the Alumni & Affiliates Open track at the 2025 Harvard President's Innovation Challenge. Designed to support high-impact ventures emerging from Harvard's global network, the annual competition celebrates ground-breaking solutions to real-world challenges. HaloBraid slashes traditional styling times from hours to minutes, reducing physical strain like carpal tunnel and back pain for braiders while allowing salons to comfortably double their daily clients. The idea for HaloBraid came directly from Ogunbiyi's personal experience as a braid enthusiast. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Harvard-trained engineer spent four long days trying to install her own knotless braids. That tedious experience sparked a lightbulb moment: building smart engineering to handle the repetitive, time-consuming part of hair braiding while keeping the stylist completely in control of the craft. The official design of HaloBraid, the world's first automated braid-assist device launching commercially in autumn 2026. Photo Credit: Yinka Ogunbiyi/Instagram Now backed by over $7 million in funding and with more than 7,000 salons eagerly sitting on its waiting list, HaloBraid is gearing up for its official commercial rollout. Adding even more creative authority to the vision, world-renowned celebrity hairstylist Vernon François has officially joined the team as Creative Engineer. Reflecting on his role in shaping this next-generation beauty technology, François shared: I am proud to announce that I have joined Halo as a Creative Engineer. This milestone is the result of unwavering consistency, relentless curiosity, and the understanding that artistry is a form of intelligence. Decades of experience working with hair, people, and potential now empower me to shape the future. There is a significant difference between being invited to the room and searching for a seat at the table - and walking in to find your place already recognised. But this goes even further. I haven't been invited just to sit at the table. I've been invited to question its structure, influence its design, and define who it serves next. My perspective is an essential part of the process, not an addition. This is true meaningful collaboration. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Not by coincidence, but through consistency, artistry, and a steadfast conviction that the knowledge BellaNaija hold belongs in shaping the future. HaloBraid supports professional stylists by completing hand-started braids up to five times faster while matching their technique. Thank you to the Halo team for recognizing not only my work but the potential of what BellaNaija will create together. The Art of Afro Hair isn't standing outside the future asking to be included - it's helping to engineer it. The groundbreaking device is officially set to make its commercial debut in autumn 2026, launching first across select professional salons. HaloBraid founder Yinka Ogunbiyi at Harvard Business School, where her automated braid-assist technology won top honours at the President's Innovation Challenge. Photo Credit: Yinka Ogunbiyi/Instagram

The hair-braiding robot is coming to salons - Would you let it finish your braids? By Team CurlyNikki Six-hour braiding appointments may be coming for their biggest disruption since pre-stretched hair. HaloBraid, the hair-braiding device that has been quietly making its way toward salons, is entering its launch era. And the company just brought one of the beauty industry's most respected textured-hair experts into the room. Celebrity hairstylist Vernon François joined Halo on September 2 as an expert adviser and the company's first Creative Engineer, working directly with the engineering team as HaloBraid moves toward commercial use. Yes, there is now a job called Creative Engineer for a braiding robot. CurlyNikki love 2026 (CurlyNikki think ,lol) But before anybody starts imagining a machine replacing your braider, that is not what HaloBraid does. What exactly is HaloBraid? HaloBraid is better described as a braid-assist device. *The stylist still handles the parts that actually require a stylist. *She sections the hair. *She creates the parting pattern. *She begins the braid. *She incorporates the extension hair. Then HaloBraid can take over the repetitive three-strand braiding portion farther down the length. Halo describes it simply: "Started by hand, finished by Halo." The device cannot map out your knotless parts, invent a cornrow pattern or replace the artistry involved in creating a beautiful head of braids. And that's kind of a big deal. This isn't an assembly line, or one-size-fits-all. Heart parts won't look the same on all heads. But the endless hand-over-hand motion required to complete hundreds of inches of braiding hair, no matter the head... that's the part CurlyNikki is here for. The repetitive labor that sends many of my stylists in for carpal tunnel surgery and early retirement. How much faster is HaloBraid? Halo says its technology can significantly reduce appointment time. The company's current demonstration frames a traditional appointment running roughly from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. versus finishing around noon with HaloBraid. Earlier reporting from Allure said the device can complete the braiding portion as much as five times faster in some circumstances and noted that the company plans to begin placing HaloBraid in salons this month. Obviously, your actual appointment time would depend on the style, length, density, number of braids and stylist. So no, HaloBraid does not magically make every set of waist-length knotless braids a two-hour appointment. But even shaving a few hours off a long service would be a meaningful change. For CurlyNikki. And possibly an even bigger one for braiders. The real story may be the stylist's hands. If you have ever watched a braider work for eight straight hours, you already know this is physical labor. Hands. Wrists. Fingers. Shoulders. Back. Feet. Repeat. Then do another client tomorrow. Halo founder Yinka Ogunbiyi has said stylists involved in the device's development repeatedly discussed problems including carpal tunnel and early-onset arthritis. The company says reducing repetitive braiding motion could decrease wear on stylists' hands while allowing them to serve more clients. That is where the technology becomes more interesting to CurlyNikki. CurlyNikki has seen enough beauty "innovation" that essentially means finding another way to remove Black expertise from the equation. This is being positioned differently: keep the braider, keep the skill, automate some of the strain. Whether it works that way in real salons will be the real test. Why bringing in Vernon François matters. François has spent more than three decades working with textured hair, and he is now advising Halo as its first Creative Engineer. According to the company, he will work directly with its engineering team on functionality, user experience and how HaloBraid fits into actual professional styling. That appointment gives Halo something beauty tech desperately needs: Someone in the room who knows BLACK hair. Not hair theoretically. Not "textured hair" as a demographic slide in a presentation. Hair behind the chair. Hair in the kitchen probably, too. There is a long history of beauty technologies working beautifully on straight or loosely textured hair and then falling apart when confronted with dense coils, extension hair, tension management and the thousand tiny judgment calls Black stylists make without even thinking about them. If Halo wants braiders to trust this thing, engineering cannot happen separately from braiding expertise. Stylists are already lining up. Demand appears substantial before broad consumer exposure. Allure reported that Halo had 6,000 stylists signed up to receive HaloBraid and another 5,000 stylists and salons on a waitlist, spread across cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. That is roughly 11,000 professional leads. Halo's website is still actively accepting stylists, braiders, salon owners and clients for its waitlist. The company has also raised millions in funding, including investment led by Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. So this is no longer a cute prototype from a college lab. There is serious money and a commercial rollout behind it. Would CurlyNikki let a robot braid its hair? Well. The question is slightly wrong. Would CurlyNikki let a braider use a tool that finishes the repetitive length of its braid after she has already created it correctly? Probably. Though that's coming from someone who hasn't climbed into the backseat of a self-driving Uber either, and has no plans to do so. If the braid looks the same, tension remains comfortable, the stylist retains control and CurlyNikki get three hours of its Saturday back, CurlyNikki can certainly have a conversation. CurlyNikki would be far less interested in technology designed to eliminate the stylist altogether. If HaloBraid can protect the craft while reducing the repetitive labor around it, this may be one of the rare moments when beauty technology actually understands what its job is!