10Beauty Raises $23.5M to Scale Robotic Manicures Beyond Boston
10Beauty, the Boston-based robotics company behind what it calls the first full-service robotic manicure, has closed a $23.5 million funding round led by Story Ventures. The raise pushes the company’s total funding past $70 million and arrives as it moves from a single-market pilot into a multi-city rollout.
What the Machine Actually Does
Unlike nail-polish vending gimmicks or partial-automation concepts that have surfaced in the beauty space before, 10Beauty’s system handles the entire manicure workflow: polish removal, nail shaping, cuticle care, color application, top coat, and drying. Computer vision guides the robotics through each step, while a single-use polish pod system — similar in concept to a coffee capsule — is meant to solve the hygiene and consistency problems that have long dogged walk-in nail services. The polish itself is proprietary, vegan, and non-toxic, positioned as a longer-lasting alternative to a standard polish manicure without stepping into gel territory.
The pitch is straightforward: manicures are frequent, repeatable, and broadly loved, but scheduling friction, inconsistent technician quality, and unpredictable service times have kept the category surprisingly hard to access reliably. 10Beauty is betting that robotics can standardize the experience the way automation has standardized other high-frequency consumer services.
From Pilot to Rollout
The company has been live with Ulta Beauty in Greater Boston and is now expanding into Chicago. New locations include a Nordstrom in Natick, Massachusetts; Ulta Beauty’s new flagship store in Naperville, Illinois; 7am in Chicago as 10Beauty’s first nail salon partner; and the Belgrade Group in Boston as its first hair salon partner. Altogether, 10Beauty says it has agreements in place for roughly 850 machines across its initial retail partners — a meaningful jump from single-site pilot territory into what looks like a genuine deployment pipeline.
The new capital is earmarked for continued technology development, operational readiness, and expanding the retail and salon partner network.
Why Investors Are Interested
Jake Yormak of Story Ventures framed the deal around the broader robotics-as-a-service thesis, pointing to 10Beauty’s combination of a large, recurring service category with commercial traction that’s rare among robotics startups — most of which struggle to get past pilot deployments, let alone lock in agreements for hundreds of units. Founded in 2019, 10Beauty has now attracted backing not just from venture firms but from a notable roster of individual investors including Karlie Kloss, Sara and Erin Foster, Bethenny Frankel, and Victoria Beckham — a signal that the company has also built consumer-brand credibility alongside its technical case.
The Bigger Picture
10Beauty sits at an interesting intersection: it’s a hardware and computer-vision company, but its real product is service consistency in a category where consistency has historically been the hardest thing to deliver. If the ~850-machine rollout across Ulta, Nordstrom, and salon partners performs well operationally, it becomes a useful data point for how far robotics-as-a-service can extend into other high-frequency, high-touch consumer categories — not just manicures, but adjacent personal-care services that share the same scheduling and consistency problems.