Neko Health is a preventive health startup that uses a proprietary body scan, blood work, and clinician review to spot risks before symptoms push people into the healthcare system. Now it’s raised a massive $700 million Series C as the company gets ready for its first U.S. clinic in New York. The pitch is simple: healthcare is still too reactive and too fragmented. It’s also too slow for people who want a clear read on their health before something goes wrong. Founded in 2018 by Spotify founder Daniel Ek and CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne, Neko Health is trying to turn preventive screening into a repeat annual habit instead of a once-in-a-crisis event.
What does Neko Health actually do?
Neko Health offers a 60-minute preventive health visit that combines scanning, biometric testing, blood analysis, and a clinician consultation in one appointment. The workflow is tightly packaged. First the body is measured, then results are processed on-site, then a clinician reviews everything with the patient. Follow-up with specialists is included if something looks off.
That scan is more than a fancy camera booth. Its system uses more than 70 sensors and collects 50 million data points. It stores a detailed skin map using over 2,000 high-resolution images so changes can be tracked over time. It also runs cardiovascular assessments and measures oxygen saturation and arterial health. Those readings are combined with blood biomarkers covering areas like cholesterol, metabolic health, and immune function.
The product has become more consumer-friendly this year. Neko recently added body composition analysis, including visceral fat and body fat measurement without a DEXA or MRI. iPhone users can now connect Apple Health so clinicians can review everyday signals like steps, sleep, and heart rate variability alongside scan results. That matters. A static clinic visit is useful, but a scan plus everyday health data makes a stronger case.
That’s the real hook. Instead of bouncing between a dermatologist, a cardiology workup, lab testing, and a follow-up GP appointment, Neko bundles those checks into one visit with same-visit results and a shareable app record. For a lot of people, that convenience is the product.
Who founded Neko Health and why now?
The founding story
Neko Health started in Stockholm in 2018 with a pretty blunt question: if you built healthcare from scratch today, would you really center it on treating people only after they get sick? That question came from Daniel Ek, who had already spent years rebuilding music distribution through Spotify, and from Hjalmar Nilsonne, who took on the operator role and now runs Neko as CEO. The company spent 4 years developing the technology before launching publicly in February 2023.
Why these founders make sense for this bet
Ek’s role in the story is obvious. He knows how to build a consumer product that turns a messy, legacy industry into something simpler and habit-forming. That doesn’t mean healthcare behaves like streaming. It doesn’t. But it does explain why Neko feels designed like a product company first and a clinic second.
Nilsonne brings a different kind of fit. He grew up in a family of doctors, but his own career started in engineering and energy tech rather than medicine. In 2018, when Ek first messaged him about reinventing healthcare, Nilsonne was winding down an AI-powered smart home energy monitoring startup after it struggled to find product-market fit. That mix — medical exposure at home, engineering training, and a scar from a previous startup — gives Neko’s founding team more credibility than a celebrity-founder headline alone.
Traction, early signals, and the funding stack
The company now has real operating proof behind the vision. More than 100,000 people in Sweden and the U.K. have already had a Neko Health scan. More than 350,000 people have either joined the waitlist or registered for one. Neko says 75% of members book and prepay their next scan before leaving the first appointment. That’s the kind of repeat behavior investors love because it hints at an annual preventive-care subscription in everything but name.
There are some clinical signals too, though these are still early. Neko says 3 in 4 returning members who previously had severe or life-threatening conditions flagged are now in good health or have those conditions under control. It also says 5 of 7 tracked biomarkers improved significantly between first and second scans. One widely shared anecdote came from Calm founder Alex Tew, who said on X that a Neko scan found a malignant mole on his back that he then had removed: “I’m grateful to Neko for helping me discover this – I’m not sure how I would have otherwise.”
On the capital side, this is Neko’s $700 million Series C, announced on July 15, 2026. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round. O.G. Venture Partners co-led it. Atomico, General Catalyst, Lakestar, Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum, and BDT & MSD also participated. The new financing comes after a $260 million Series B in January 2025, also led by Lightspeed, and David Ofer of O.G. Venture Partners is set to join the board subject to regulatory approval.
Where Neko Health sits against competitors
Neko isn’t alone anymore. Prenuvo is the clearest category peer: it raised $120 million in February 2025 and sells MRI-based preventive scans paired with blood biomarker analysis, including newer products around brain health. That puts both companies in the same broad consumer prevention lane, even if the hardware and care model differ.
But Neko’s real competition is still the old way of doing things. Separate lab work. A skin check at one office. A cardiovascular assessment somewhere else. Maybe an executive physical if you can afford it. Neko’s differentiation is that it built its own devices in-house and processes results on-site. It also layers in clinician review and packages everything into a retail-like visit that feels faster and less intimidating than a traditional imaging route. Midjourney is also working on a body scanner tied to a spa concept expected in San Francisco in 2027, which tells you tech founders clearly see prevention as a product category, not just a medical niche.
Why Neko Health’s $700M round matters
This round matters because Neko has moved past novelty. A flashy scan can generate a waitlist. Building a repeatable clinic network across countries is much harder.
And that’s where $700 million changes the conversation. Neko now has the balance sheet to open new centers and hire clinicians. It can also adapt its model to U.S. healthcare rules and keep investing in the hardware and software stack that makes the experience feel fast instead of bureaucratic. The New York launch isn’t a side quest anymore. It’s the next real test.
For customers, this funding could mean shorter waits and broader access. For investors, it’s a bet that preventive screening can become a recurring consumer behavior, not just a luxury health purchase people try once for curiosity and then forget. The 75% rebooking figure is probably the most important number in the whole story. It suggests Neko may be building a durable habit, not a one-off wellness stunt.
How big is the preventive health scan market?
The surrounding market is already large, even before you narrow it to direct-to-consumer preventive clinics. Grand View Research estimates the global whole-body imaging market was worth $29.6 billion in 2024 and projects it will reach $41.7 billion by 2030, growing at a 5.9% CAGR. North America accounted for 34.4% of the market in 2024. That helps explain why New York is such an important next stop for Neko Health.
What’s changing isn’t just imaging hardware. It’s consumer behavior. More people are used to tracking sleep, heart rate, recovery, glucose, and exercise. That makes a prevention-first clinic feel less alien than it would have 10 years ago. At the same time, health systems and employers have stronger financial reasons to care about earlier detection because chronic disease is expensive, long-lasting, and usually a lot cheaper to manage before it becomes acute.
That doesn’t mean the category is settled. Full-body scanning still has open questions around pricing, clinical follow-through, and how much signal consumers can actually act on. But the direction is pretty clear: prevention is becoming a product people are willing to buy directly, not just a slogan buried inside public-health policy.
What to watch after Neko Health’s Series C
The bet on Neko Health is really a bet that preventive care can be productized without becoming shallow wellness theater. So far, the company has shown demand, repeat usage, and enough capital to push beyond Europe. The next thing to watch is simple: whether the New York opening in 2026 turns Neko Health from an ambitious European clinic network into a real U.S. healthcare business.
Read how E3 Electric.Ai raised Rs 100 crore in a Series A led by BluVenture Holdings to launch its AI-powered TRION electric scooter and build a software-driven EV platform for India's family commuters.
FAQ about Neko Health
- What funding did Neko Health raise? Neko Health raised a $700 million Series C announced on July 15, 2026. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and O.G. Venture Partners co-led it, following Neko’s $260 million Series B in January 2025.
- How does the Neko Health scan work? It’s a 60-minute preventive health visit that combines body scanning, blood analysis, biometrics, and a clinician consultation in one appointment. Results are processed on-site. The system now also includes body composition metrics plus Apple Health data for patients who want wearables folded into the review.
- Who founded Neko Health? Neko Health was founded in 2018 by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne. Ek brought consumer-tech building experience from Spotify, while Nilsonne came in with an engineering background, a family connection to medicine, and previous startup experience before becoming Neko’s CEO.
- Is Neko Health a body scanning startup or a healthcare clinic company? It’s both, and that’s why investors care. Neko builds proprietary scanning technology but delivers it through physical clinics, which puts it closer to a vertically integrated preventive healthcare company than a pure software startup or a standard imaging center.
