Spotify cofounder Daniel Ek built his audio empire on the premise that music should be instantly playable, with no waiting around for songs to buffer or download. Now, he’s taking that desire for instant gratification and pointing it at our bodies.
Ek has developed a $500 longevity body scanner that collects photos, blood, and electrical signals from the body and spits out a health action plan.
Launching in New York City next month, the Neko body scanner is designed to spot hidden health issues. It assesses a person’s risk of skin cancer, evaluates heart health, and checks in on visceral body fat and grip strength. Within the hour, the user gets a review of how their body is doing.
Ahead of the launch, Neko co-founder Hjalmar Nilsonne told Business Insider that consumers’ “expectation of what healthcare is is changing.”
Neko, which is already available in Sweden and the UK, is launching in the US at a time when consumers are generating more personal health data than ever before, from wearables including rings and smartwatches, to direct-to-consumer blood tests, CGMs for blood sugar monitoring, and body scanners for cancer.
Private insurance premiums and payouts are changing rapidly, too, with healthcare costs skyrocketing for both employers and employees in recent years. Neko is one of several personalized health players reaching directly for consumers’ wallets, bypassing the traditional insurance and reimbursement system.
Neko’s break into the US market “speaks to this ascendancy of people wanting to take matters into their own hands and not trusting the system,” Dr. Jordan Shlain, the founder of concierge medical practice Private Medical, told me.
With $700 million in Series C funding from investors including Mark Zuckerberg, Maria Sharapova, Thierry Henry, and Tim Ferriss, Neko is positioned to do what its predecessor, Forward Health, could never: convince tens of thousands of people to pay for a fancy, tech-forward checkup.
Neko Health went global fast
Founded in 2018, Neko started scanning patients in Stockholm in 2023, and added a London clinic in 2024.
The first US location will be up and running in Manhattan on September 24, the company said, with plans to have more locations in New York and in Miami by the end of 2026. Then, it’ll be onward to Washington DC and San Francisco, the company said.
Neko Health
According to Neko, more than 350,000 people around the world have joined the waitlist to get scanned, including 25,000 New Yorkers.
It sits in a middle zone between preventative medicine and primary care
Neko is angling to become a consumer’s first stop for a quick, space-agey health check.
It isn’t quite offering a replacement for primary care. It can only provide a snapshot of some basic health indicators, including bloodwork, body composition measurements, grip strength, heart health, and cancer checks, especially for skin cancer. Then, you meet with a clinician on site to go over your results.
Neko is geared towards a health-conscious consumer willing to pay their own way. It’s building on the successes of other healthcare ventures — Prenuvo’s $2,500 MRI, Function’s $500 blood test evaluating your organs, and Stelo’s $100 over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor.
Shalin got scanned recently at Neko’s London outpost, just to see what they’re offering. He said the scanner “felt a little Star Trek-y” like a high-tech “welcome mat to go get curious about yourself.”
As a doctor, though, he said he didn’t really learn anything new from the visit.
“You’re scratching the surface,” he said. “Let me look at your skin, let me look at a blood test, let me do an EKG.”
If any worrisome signal pops up at Neko, the patient would have to go to a real doctor’s office for care.
Health tech investor and former journalist Chrissy Farr also tried out Neko’s scanner in Stockholm last year and said she enjoyed how it makes predictions about how healthy you’ll be in the future, based on your lifestyle and scan readings today.
“What I liked about these recommendations is they felt data-driven and unique to me, even as I’d heard all of this before from primary care physicians,” she wrote in her newsletter, Second Opinion. “It’s a snapshot of today, with extrapolations about tomorrow. That idea is a powerful one, and I’d appreciate seeing a study on whether it has a greater impact for people than simply hearing that they should make behavioral changes.”
Longevity experts focused on preventative medicine say they’re not sure yet how useful this offering will be for relatively health-conscious consumers, who may not find anything amiss during a Neko check. According to Neko, 80% of clients scanned so far have come out in good health and require no follow up.
“Look, if we can automate the health checkup, that’s great,” Dr. Andrea Maier, a leading longevity physician and professor of precision geromedicine at the National University of Singapore, told Business Insider.
She sees the offering as a “middle market” option for consumers who “think about their health, but who do not know what health really is and what you should measure.”
Maier said the scan could be great for detecting skin cancer earlier, but misses other aspects of longevity medicine, including genetic testing, microbiome sampling, fitness markers like VO2 max, and skin elasticity, just to name a few.
“The database they are creating, it’s quite something,” Maier said. “And you can do more. Why shouldn’t they do CT scans, for example, to go deeper in the tissues? All possible. This is maybe just the start.”