Neko Health closes $700m Series C to take its Stockholm-built body scan to New York

Neko Health, the Stockholm preventive health company co-founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Spotify's Daniel Ek, has raised a $700m Series C. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with O.G. Venture Partners as co-lead, and the cash will pay for Neko's first move outside Europe, starting with clinics in New York.

The size of the cheque is the story. Eighteen months earlier, in January 2025, Neko raised $260m in a Series B that Lightspeed also led, at a valuation reported at $1.8bn. The new round is almost three times larger, which puts Neko among the best-funded consumer health companies to come out of Europe.

Who is backing the round

Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar, all existing shareholders, put in money again. New names on the cap table include Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum and BDT & MSD. David Ofer of O.G. Venture Partners is set to join Neko's board once regulators sign off.

Lightspeed's conviction is plain. Bejul Somaia, a global partner at the firm, called Neko "one of the most important healthcare companies of our generation" and said the fund was glad to increase its stake in the partnership. Author Tim Ferriss, who has written widely about tracking personal health data, also said he had invested.

Nilsonne, who runs the company as chief executive, framed the raise around two things: geography and research.

"With this round, we're taking our mission to the US for the first time," said Hjalmar Nilsonne, co-founder and CEO of Neko Health.

He added that Neko would keep spending on the science and hardware behind its scan, and pointed to repeat visits as evidence that the model works.

What members pay for

Neko sells a single product: a one-hour, non-invasive body scan that uses no radiation. It costs £299 in Britain and 2,750 SEK in Sweden. The company builds its own sensors, which map skin and moles, check heart and circulation, and combine with a blood test to look for signs of pre-diabetes, blood abnormalities and risk factors for stroke, heart attack and metabolic syndrome. A clinician goes through the results with the member in the same appointment, so nobody waits days for a letter.

Because Neko owns its full technology stack, it can change the scan without waiting on suppliers. A few weeks before the round closed it added body composition measurements, taken in seconds, and began having clinicians look over data from members' wearables. In June it opened a new Stockholm clinic fitted with a second generation of its own devices, called Derma-2, Echo-2 and Spectrum-2. The company says these capture more signal from skin, heart and blood flow and automate more of the routine work, leaving staff more time with members. They are due in every Neko clinic over the coming months.

The numbers behind the US bet

Neko opened its first clinic in February 2023. It now runs sites in Sweden and across the UK, with Manchester, Birmingham and four London locations: Marylebone, Spitalfields, Covent Garden and Victoria. More than 350,000 people have signed up for a scan and over 100,000 have had one, according to the company.

Retention is the figure investors will watch. Neko says three in four members book and prepay their next annual scan before they leave the clinic. For a consumer health service that people pay for out of pocket, that is a strong signal of repeat revenue.

The company also points to its own health data. Among returning members who had a severe or life-threatening condition flagged at their first scan, Neko says three quarters were later in good health or had the condition under control. It reports that five of seven key biomarkers improved by a statistically significant margin between a member's first and second visit. These results come from Neko itself and have not been published as independent research, so they should be read as company claims.

For European founders, the round shows a pattern that is still uncommon: a hardware-heavy health company proving demand at home in Sweden and the UK before tackling the US, rather than launching there first. It also shows that the investors who backed the Series B were willing to put far more money in once the clinic model had shown repeat bookings at scale.

New York is the test. Neko is entering a market where consumers already pay directly for many health services, but where clinic rents, staffing and regulation look very different from Stockholm or London. The company plans to roll its second-generation devices across its existing clinics in the next few months while it builds out its American sites.