Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s healthtech startup Neko Health opened its first body scanning facility in Stockholm in February last year and has gone on to complete 3,000 scans. Now it’s heading to London with a launch planned for this summer.
In February last year, the Swedish company raised a €60m Series A, led by Lakestar with the participation of Atomico and General Catalyst, for European expansion. At the time, the company didn’t want to specify which countries it had in mind.
Neko Health’s main product is a full-body scanning system for broad and non-invasive health data collection, which the company wants to make quicker, more convenient and more affordable. By catching potential diseases earlier, it hopes to increase the chances of treating them and reduce the cost of healthcare in the long term.
Within hours of its official launch in February last year, all the slots at its first body-scanning clinic in Stockholm had sold out.
The body-scanning procedure takes 10-15 minutes and is followed by a consultation with a doctor. Neko says its scanner uses over 70 sensors to collect 50m data points and can, for instance, detect tiny skin changes. That could help doctors detect diseases like skin cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other metabolic syndromes earlier.
A scan will set you back €250 but the fee doesn’t seem to put people off. Neko has 20k patients on its waiting list in Sweden and has opened its international waiting list, the company says, where plenty of Brits have signed up.
Origin story
The startup, founded by Daniel Ek and entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne in 2018, was in stealth until its official launch last year. Before launching its body scanning facility the company opened a primary care clinic in Stockholm, which the founders are still running alongside the body scanning facility.
Before raising its Series A, Ek invested about €30m in the company, partly through his moonshot investment vehicle Prima Materia.
The UK has seen the most investments in longevity in Europe — making London a natural choice for Neko.
