10Beauty Secures $23.5M, But Why?

Let’s be honest. The nail salon experience has not changed in decades. You walk in, you wait, someone paints your nails, and you sit there trying not to smudge anything for the next 20 minutes. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And yet, somehow, nobody really fixed it. Until now. 10Beauty secures $23.5M in its latest funding round, and if you work in beauty, retail, or tech, you should probably stop and pay attention to what that actually means.

This is not a “cool concept” startup anymore. This is a company with real machines, real partners, and real money behind it. The question is no longer whether robotic manicures will happen. The question is how fast.

What Is 10Beauty, and What Does It Do?

Founded in 2013 and based in Boston, 10Beauty is a robotics company building what it calls the world’s first fully automated, salon-quality manicure machine. The product is called “The 10.” It handles a five-step manicure process, polish removal, shaping, filing, cuticle care, and drying, without a human technician touching your hands at any point.

You customize your preferences through a smartphone app. Then you put your hands in. The machine does the rest.

Simple concept. Incredibly hard to actually build. And that gap between “simple concept” and “actually works” is exactly where most beauty tech startups have failed over the years. 10Beauty claims they have cracked it. Their debut at Ulta Beauty in Boston suggests they are not bluffing.

How Much Money Did 10Beauty Raise and Who Led the Round?

Here is the number that matters: 10Beauty secures $23.5M in new funding, led by Story Ventures. That brings their total raised to roughly $70 million.

Think about that for a second. Seventy million dollars into a company that makes a manicure machine. That is not a bet people make lightly. Previous investors include Imaginary Ventures and Victoria Beckham, among others. So this is not a first-time raise with friends and family money. This is a company that has convinced serious, experienced investors, multiple times, to keep writing checks.

And that pattern of continued investment matters more than any single round. It means people who looked under the hood came back for more. That tells you something.

Where Will 10Beauty’s Robotic Manicure Machines Be Available?

Here is the part that most people gloss over but shouldn’t.

10Beauty already has agreements in place for its first 850 machines. Not plans. Not letters of intent. Agreements. Across beauty retail, department stores, hospitality, fitness centers, nail salons, and hair salons. Ulta Beauty and Nordstrom are confirmed launch partners.

So the question is not “will anyone buy this?” They already did.

The strategy is straightforward. Put the machine where the customer already is. Gyms. Hotels. Shopping centers. Hair salons. You are not asking someone to make a special trip to get a manicure. You are offering them one while they are already doing something else. That is a fundamentally different value proposition than what a traditional nail salon offers.

But wait, here is the kicker. The first expansion market is Chicago, after Boston. That rollout is already in motion. This is not a “coming soon” situation. The machines are going in. The locations are confirmed. The timeline is now.

How Much Does a Robotic Manicure Cost and How Long Does It Take?

Thirty dollars. That’s the price at Ulta Beauty. For a full manicure. In 25 to 45 minutes, depending on how many steps you choose.

The reality is, that is competitive with what you’d pay at most mid-range nail salons, and in many cities, it’s actually cheaper. And you don’t have to tip a machine. You don’t have to make small talk. You don’t have to wait for the technician to finish with someone else.

Now, some people love the social experience of a nail salon. That’s real, and fair. But a lot of people just want their nails done. Fast. Consistently. At a reasonable price. And for that group, a $30, 30-minute machine that doesn’t require an appointment starts to look very attractive, very quickly.

Short sentences. Big implications. That’s how disruption usually works.

What Will 10Beauty Use the New Funding For?

No fluff here. The company has been direct about where the $23.5M goes. Technology development. Operational readiness. And the beginning of actual deployment across launch partners.

In plain language: they are building more machines, making them better, and putting them in locations. That’s the job right now. Not brand campaigns. Not influencer deals. The hard, unglamorous work of manufacturing at scale and keeping 850-plus machines running across the country.

And that last part is genuinely difficult. Hardware at scale is brutal. Every machine that goes down in an Ulta is a customer who walks away frustrated. So operational infrastructure, service teams, software updates, remote diagnostics, all of that matters enormously. The fact that they named it explicitly in their funding priorities suggests they understand this. That’s a good sign.

So the money is going where it needs to go. Toward making the product work, reliably, at scale, in real-world environments. That’s the only thing that matters at this stage.

Who Are the Investors and Founders Behind 10Beauty?

Let’s start with the founders, because this is where the story gets genuinely interesting.

Alexander Shashou and Justin Effron are co-CEOs. Before 10Beauty, they built ALICE, a B2B hospitality software company that Expedia Group acquired for $130 million. So these are not first-time founders figuring it out. They have already built and sold a company. That experience changes everything about how you approach the second one.

And then there’s Chris Casey, co-founder and CTO. Casey spent 13 years at iRobot, where he was on the original team that invented the Roomba. The Roomba. One of the most successful consumer robots ever built. He has more than 25 years of experience in consumer robotics. That is not a resume you manufacture.

On the investor side, Imaginary Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Red Sea Ventures came in on earlier rounds. Victoria Beckham also backed the company. The founders of Warby Parker, Harry’s, and Allbirds invested through their fund Good Friends. Sara and Erin Foster are also on the cap table and have talked about 10Beauty on their podcast.

It’s a strong room. And strong rooms attract stronger rooms. That dynamic is real.

What Is 10Beauty’s Big Vision for the Future of Beauty?

Here is where it gets big. Really big.

When 10Beauty secures $23.5M, the tactical story is about 850 machines and a Chicago rollout. But the strategic story is something else entirely. Co-CEO Alexander Shashou laid it out at the WWD Beauty Inc The Catalysts event in New York. The vision is simple: make changing your nails as easy as getting a cup of coffee.

Not almost as easy. As easy. Think about what that would actually mean. Coffee went from a sit-down diner experience to a Starbucks on every corner to a pod on your kitchen counter. Each step in that evolution exploded the total market because it removed a barrier. Convenience drives volume. Volume drives revenue.

The reality is, if you can get a manicure at your gym, your hotel, your hair salon, and eventually your home, you are not just competing with nail salons. You are creating a new category. You are reaching people who currently don’t get manicures at all because the experience is too inconvenient or too expensive.

And here is what backs that up beyond just vision: before wide deployment, 10Beauty had already pre-sold approximately $13 million in annual manicure pod subscriptions to its launch partners. That is not a projection. That is committed revenue from real companies before the machines were even broadly live.

It’s lonely building something genuinely new. It’s hard to convince people that a machine can do something humans have always done. But when the product works, and the partners show up, and the investors come back, and the pre-sales roll in before launch, that loneliness starts to feel like something else. It starts to feel like being early.

10Beauty secures $23.5M not because the idea sounds good. But because the evidence is stacking up that this is actually going to work. And that’s a very different kind of story.

Inside 10Beauty’s Business Model