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Alexis Ohanian's 776 Leads $7M Seed in Hair-Tech Startup Halo
Seven Seven Six, Ohanian's VC firm, led the round in the hair-tech startup's braid-assist device that aims to triple stylist throughput in salons.
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Halo, a Los Angeles-based hardware startup building a powered braiding tool, raised a $7 million seed round led by Seven Seven Six (776), the venture firm founded by Alexis Ohanian. AlleyCorp and Bling Capital joined the round.
The company's first product, HaloBraid, is a patent-pending device that helps salon stylists complete braids faster. Halo says the device is designed to work across hair textures, a market gap the founding team identified after years in the beauty industry. The funding will go toward product development, manufacturing readiness, and pilot partnerships with salons ahead of a commercial launch later this year.
Halo's play is direct: the global salon industry runs on labor-intensive braiding services that cap stylist throughput at roughly one client per hour for complex styles. A hardware assist that cuts that time could shift salon economics, especially in urban markets where braiding services represent a large share of revenue for many independent stylists. The company is betting that the bottleneck is not demand but stylist time, and that a tool costing a few hundred dollars can pay for itself in weeks of added appointments.
The seed is early but tightly focused. Ohanian's 776 has backed consumer hardware before, including the smart eyewear startup Brilliant Labs and the desk-bike company FlexiSpot. The firm's thesis around creator economy and platform-adjacent tools extends to beauty: if HaloBraid is adopted, the salon itself becomes a distribution channel. AlleyCorp and Bling Capital both have track records in consumer-adjacent vertical SaaS and hardware, with Bling having backed the nail-art printer startup Nimble.
The risk is execution on manufacturing. Consumer hardware seed rounds of this size – small for a physical product – typically cover a few dozen beta units. Halo will need to demonstrate that the device works reliably across the full range of hair types and braid styles, not just in controlled demos, before salon chains commit. The company declined to name its manufacturing partner or disclose a target unit price.