Swedish health startup Neko raises $700m, valued at $1.8bn
Swedish preventive health company Neko Health has secured $700 million in new funding, propelling its valuation to $1.8 billion and signaling strong investor appetite for data-driven healthcare models aimed at easing the strain of aging populations.
Neko Health has raised $700 million in a Series C round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-led by OG Venture Partners. The funding values the Swedish preventive health company at approximately $1.8 billion, a steep increase from the $260 million valuation it secured in a Series B round just this January.
The company was founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek, the chief executive of Spotify. Since launching in February 2023, the platform has attracted a waitlist of more than 350,000 people and completed over 100,000 scans across its clinics in Sweden and the UK. Existing investors Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar participated in the latest round, joined by new backers Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum and BDT & MSD Partners.
The fresh capital will primarily fund a planned expansion into the United States, with the first clinic slated to open in New York later this year. It will also accelerate research into the early detection of disease and the development of proprietary diagnostic technologies. “As healthcare systems globally are increasingly challenged by aging populations and rising costs, there is an urgent need to shift from reactive to proactive care,” Nilsonne said. “We are just getting started.”
Scaling a data platform
Neko builds its own imaging hardware, software and analytical infrastructure in-house to ensure data consistency across its expanding clinical network. This standardized data collection allows the company to track patient health longitudinally rather than through episodic visits. Three weeks ago, the company rolled out a scan upgrade across all clinics that adds body composition measurement and integrates clinician reviews of wearable data.
This combination of continuous wearable tracking and in-clinic diagnostics is designed to shift patient health monitoring from a single snapshot to a continuous timeline. Early clinical results appear promising. Among returning members, five of seven key biomarkers improved with statistical significance between scans. Furthermore, three-quarters of individuals flagged with a severe or life-threatening condition at their first scan now have their health under control or are in good health.
The rapid valuation growth highlights how aggressively venture capital is backing the shift toward preventive medicine. Investors are essentially financing the construction of a massive, longitudinal dataset of human health before disease symptoms appear. However, early detection is not the same as prevention, and finding a disease earlier does not automatically change its outcome. Whether consumer-funded scanning genuinely shifts long-term disease incidence, improves healthy lifespans and reduces systemic healthcare costs remains an open question that will require considerably more data to answer.
