Neko Health Comes to America: Spotify Billionaire Daniel Ek's Body Scan Startup Explained
TL;DR
- Neko Health, the preventive body-scan startup co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, is bringing its $300, 60-minute full-body health check to the US after selling out clinics across Stockholm, Gothenburg, London, and other European cities.
- The company's proprietary scanning system uses over 70 sensors, high-resolution imaging, and AI to map skin, heart, metabolism and other risk factors, pairing instant results with a doctor consultation the same day.
- With a $1.8 billion valuation after its $260 million Series B and a massive US waitlist already building, Neko is now hiring a US team, scouting a New York flagship, and gearing up for FDA navigation and a future US fundraise.
From Spotify to Skin Scans: Why Everyone Is Talking About Neko
If you have followed European health tech at all in the last two years, you have heard the name whispered like a secret club: Neko Health. Co-founded in 2018 by Spotify billionaire Daniel Ek and serial entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, the Stockholm-based startup has turned preventive care into a status symbol.
On a recent episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, investor Farooq Abbasi joined to explain why Neko has become the hottest health tech company in Europe — and why its long-awaited move to America could be its biggest test yet.
The pitch is simple and radical at the same time: for a flat fee of around $300, you get a non-invasive, full-body scan that would normally take months of specialist appointments, all done in about an hour.
In London, appointments sell out within minutes of new slots dropping. In Sweden, the waitlist at one point stretched past 100,000 people. Now Neko wants to replicate that frenzy in the United States.
How A Neko Scan Actually Works
Forget the annual physical where a doctor listens to your heart for 30 seconds and orders basic bloodwork. A Neko visit feels more like stepping into an Apple Store crossed with an MRI lab.
You step into a sleek, minimalist clinic and change into comfortable clothes. Then you stand in Neko's proprietary Body Scanner — a curved pod lined with sensors. In just a few minutes, the system captures thousands of high-resolution images of your skin, mapping every mole, lesion, and mark with dermatology-grade precision.
Next comes the rest of the stack: a 4D blood pressure and arterial stiffness check, grip strength, ECG, body composition, and a comprehensive blood panel covering metabolic, cardiovascular, and cholesterol markers. In total, Neko says it collects over 5,000 health data points from more than 70 sensors.
That is where the AI comes in. Neko's in-house models triage the imaging and sensor data, flagging potential risks for physicians to review. Within the same visit, you sit down with a doctor for a 30 to 45 minute consultation, walk through your results on a big screen, and leave with actionable next steps — not a PDF portal you never open.
The company is careful to say it is not a diagnostic hospital. It does not replace oncology or cardiology. It is a top-of-funnel early detection engine designed to catch skin cancer, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, metabolic syndrome, and other preventable conditions years earlier.
Why Daniel Ek Bet Everything On Prevention
For Ek, Neko is deeply personal. After seeing the strain on healthcare systems and dealing with family health scares, the Spotify CEO has said he became obsessed with the idea that healthcare is reactive when it should be proactive.
He quietly co-founded Neko with Nilsonne in 2018 and self-funded much of the early R&D for four years before launching publicly in Stockholm in 2023. Ek remains chairman and its largest vision-setter, though day-to-day operations are led by Nilsonne as CEO.
Abbasi noted on Equity that this founder-market fit matters. Ek knows how to build beloved consumer products at scale, handle massive data infrastructure, and keep costs low while growing fast — exactly the playbook Neko is now applying to clinics.
Instead of selling expensive hardware to hospitals, Neko owns the entire stack: hardware, software, AI, and the clinic experience. That vertical integration lets it drive the price down from thousands of dollars for executive physicals like Prenuvo or Function Health to a few hundred dollars, opening the door to annual repeat scans.
Europe's Hottest Ticket Goes Stateside
Until now, Neko's footprint has been strictly European. After Stockholm, it expanded to Gothenburg and Malmö, then made a splashy UK debut in London's Marylebone in 2024, followed by additional London sites. Each launch followed the same pattern: announce, open waitlist, sell out.
The US has always been the obvious next step. The company confirmed in late 2024 and through 2025 that it was actively exploring a US launch, posting US-based roles for medical leadership, operations, and regulatory affairs, and scouting locations in New York City.
According to discussion on Equity, Neko is now laying the groundwork for its first American flagship, widely expected to be in Manhattan, with a US waitlist already tens of thousands strong. The move puts it head-to-head with well-funded American longevity players like Prenuvo, which offers $2,500 full-body MRIs, Function Health backed by Mark Hyman and Jonathan Swerdlin, and Superpower.
Neko's edge, Abbasi argued, is price, speed, and throughput. A Prenuvo scan takes an hour in a tube and costs 8x more. A Neko scan takes 10 minutes in the pod plus labs, with results the same day. If it can clear the regulatory path, it could undercut the entire US executive physical market.
The Money Behind The Machine
Neko is no longer a scrappy seed startup. In January 2025, it raised a massive $260 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the company at $1.8 billion and officially making it a unicorn.
That round brought total funding to over $360 million, with participation from Atomico, Lakestar, General Catalyst, and O.G. Venture Partners, plus angels like former Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen. Ek himself remains a major backer.
The capital is earmarked for exactly this moment: scaling clinic manufacturing, advancing its AI and sensor R&D, and funding US expansion. Abbasi suggested on Equity that a US launch will almost certainly require a Series C with US-based growth investors and health system partners, especially as the company navigates FDA clearance for its scanner and CLIA certification for its labs.
With revenue reportedly scaling fast in the UK and Sweden on the back of repeat annual members, Neko has leverage. It does not need to raise desperately — it can raise to blitzscale.
What’s Next — And What Could Go Wrong
The road to America is not without potholes. The US healthcare system is fragmented, litigious, and heavily regulated. Neko will need to prove its AI triage is clinically robust across diverse skin tones and populations, integrate with US referral networks when it finds something serious, and convince skeptical American physicians that a consumer tech company can do preventive medicine right.
There are also questions about false positives, over-screening, and whether ultra-broad screening creates anxiety without improving outcomes — a long-running debate in preventive health.
But if Neko can replicate its European playbook — beautiful clinics, viral word-of-mouth, genuinely useful early detections, and a price point employers and consumers can stomach — it has a shot to do for body scans what Spotify did for music: take something expensive and clunky and make it instant, affordable, and everywhere.
As Abbasi put it, Neko is not selling a scan. It is selling peace of mind. And in America, that might be the biggest market of all.
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