Nohbo did not simply disappear after taking Mark Cuban’s $100,000 Shark Tank deal. The company changed its product, raised outside venture capital, moved toward licensing and hospitality, and eventually reached a point where its founder stepped away.
Today, the picture is less tidy.
Nohbo’s consumer website is still online, but its listed products are sold out. Its LinkedIn page still describes an operating company focused on water-soluble packaging for beauty brands and hotels. At the same time, a Florida corporate-record database lists Nohbo, Inc. as inactive, with its registration revoked for failure to file an annual report in September 2025. (nohbodrops.com)
So the most accurate Nohbo Shark Tank update is not that the company definitively failed, nor that it became the huge consumer brand some older Shark Tank updates suggest.
The evidence points to a company that evolved substantially, then became difficult to verify publicly after its founder left.
Nohbo’s $100,000 Shark Tank deal was real
Benjamin Stern was 16 when he appeared on Shark Tank with Nohbo, pitching small water-soluble balls containing shampoo and other personal-care products.
His original ask was $100,000 for 20% of the company. Mark Cuban offered $100,000 for 25%, and Stern accepted. The deal was subsequently described by Stern and other contemporary sources as a completed investment. (globalyouth.wharton.upenn.edu)
The original product, however, had a problem that became central to Nohbo’s story: the shampoo-ball concept did not work particularly well at scale.
The company eventually abandoned the powdered ball format and developed a different delivery system.
Nohbo abandoned the original shampoo balls and built Nohbo Drops
By 2018, Nohbo had moved from its original powdered balls to a gel-based product called Nohbo Drops.
The company says the new format came after years of research and development. A water-soluble film surrounds a water-free personal-care formula. When the pod is exposed to water, the film dissolves and releases the product. (nohbodrops.com)
That change mattered because it turned Nohbo from a quirky Shark Tank product into something closer to a packaging and delivery technology company.
Nohbo began pursuing shampoo, body wash, conditioner and shaving products, while also working with other companies that could use the underlying water-soluble technology.
The company's own FAQ describes the transition explicitly: the original "Nohbo Balls" were replaced after the company worked through manufacturing and distribution problems, with the more universally recognizable "pod" becoming Nohbo Drops. (nohbodrops.com)
That is an important distinction when looking at what happened after Shark Tank. Nohbo did not spend the next decade simply selling the same shampoo balls shown on television.
Nohbo raised another $3 million in 2020
The business eventually attracted institutional investors beyond Cuban.
In March 2020, Nohbo announced a $3 million seed round led by Material Impact, with Safer Made and Cuban's Radical Investments also participating. The money was intended to expand manufacturing capacity and support production at much larger volumes. (gaebler.com)
That was a significant step up from the original $100,000 Shark Tank investment.
It also changed the nature of the business. Nohbo was no longer just trying to prove that dissolvable shampoo packaging could work. It was trying to build the manufacturing and commercial infrastructure necessary to sell the technology to larger customers.
By 2023, that strategy had developed further.
Nohbo raised a Series A in 2023, but the amount was not publicly disclosed
In June 2023, Nohbo announced the completion of a Series A financing round led by Material Impact.
The company did not disclose the size of the round. Participants included Dara Holdings, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and Safer Made. Wilson Sonsini, which advised Nohbo on the transaction, also confirmed that the financial terms were undisclosed. (pr.com)
That makes some of the numbers repeated on Shark Tank update websites worth treating carefully.
For example, some databases currently estimate that Nohbo raised substantially more than the publicly announced $3 million seed round. Preqin has reported a much larger Series A figure, while other databases list the Series A amount as undisclosed. (preqin.com)
There is therefore no clean, company-confirmed Series A dollar figure that should be presented as fact.
What is clear is that Nohbo was still raising institutional capital in 2023 and was positioning its technology for commercial adoption.
Nohbo was becoming a B2B technology company, not just a shampoo brand
The 2023 Series A announcement described Nohbo's technology as something that could be used by consumer packaged goods companies, retailers and hotels.
One of its newer concepts, Hydrofill, was designed around a pod that could be placed into a refillable bottle. Add water, shake it, and the personal-care product is ready for use. The company described this as a way for brands to replace conventional plastic packaging without requiring customers to change the underlying product category. (pr.com)
That strategy makes more commercial sense than trying to convince millions of consumers to replace ordinary shampoo bottles with an unfamiliar standalone product.
Nohbo could instead become the technology underneath someone else's shampoo, body wash or hotel amenity.
That is also why older descriptions of Nohbo as simply an "eco-friendly shampoo company" no longer tell the whole story.
Benjamin Stern left Nohbo in 2024
The biggest change came from inside the company.
In a LinkedIn post, Stern said his last day at Nohbo was in March 2024. He described the previous decade as an exhausting startup journey and said that he and the company's shareholders had reached a crossroads over the direction of the business.
Stern wrote that he ultimately decided to hand the reins to his colleagues and step down. (linkedin.com)
That statement is more useful than the simplified version sometimes found on Shark Tank recap sites.
Stern did not say that Nohbo had shut down. He said the shareholders and team wanted to take the company in different directions and that he no longer had the fire to champion the next stage.
After leaving Nohbo, Stern went on to build Tenkara, a company focused on software and infrastructure for manufacturers. In 2026, True Ventures described him as having spent nearly a decade operating Nohbo's manufacturing facilities before starting Tenkara. (trueventures.com)
So, is Nohbo still in business?
This is where the current evidence becomes genuinely messy.
Nohbo's consumer storefront remains accessible and lists five products, including Shampoo Drops, Body Wash Drops and Coconut Soap Slips. But every listed product is currently marked sold out. (nohbodrops.com)
The company's LinkedIn page also remains online. It describes Nohbo as a Palm Bay, Florida manufacturing company working with consumer brands and hotels on water-soluble films, and currently lists 11 employees. (linkedin.com)
There is also a separate corporate-record problem. Nohbo, Inc., registered in Florida in 2020, is listed as inactive, and the record shows a September 2025 revocation for failure to file an annual report. Benjamin Stern is still shown in the record as a director. (bisprofiles.com)
That does not, by itself, prove that every Nohbo operation or intellectual-property asset has ceased to exist. A company can change entities, restructure, license technology or operate through another corporate vehicle.
But it does mean that declaring Nohbo a healthy, active consumer business in 2026 would go beyond what the public record supports.
The real Nohbo Shark Tank update is more complicated than "success" or "failure"
Nohbo's post-Shark Tank story is actually more interesting than either extreme.
The $100,000 Mark Cuban investment helped a teenage founder keep developing an idea that initially did not work as intended. Nohbo then replaced the original powdered balls with Drops, raised $3 million in institutional seed funding, secured a later Series A with undisclosed terms, and repositioned itself around water-soluble packaging technology for larger brands and hospitality customers. (globalcosmeticsnews.com)
Then Stern left.
The company still has a public-facing presence, and its LinkedIn profile still describes an operating B2B technology business. But its consumer products are sold out, its corporate registration presents a complication, and there is not enough current public evidence to confidently describe Nohbo as either a thriving standalone company or a definitively closed one.
That uncertainty is the part many older "Nohbo Shark Tank update" articles miss.
The teenager who walked into the Tank with a dissolvable shampoo ball did build something much larger than that original product. What happened after that is not a neat Shark Tank success story. It is a startup that survived multiple product failures, attracted millions in outside capital, changed its business model, and ultimately continued without the founder who had been its public face from the beginning.
As of August 2026, the most defensible answer is therefore simple: Nohbo's technology and business appear to have outlived the original Shark Tank product, but the company's present operating status is genuinely unclear.
