Spotify Founder's Health Tech Startup Neko Health Raises $700M Series C with Investments from Sharapova, Zuckerberg
Swedish health tech company Neko Health announced it has completed a $700 million Series C funding round, co-led by venture capital firms O.G. Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Tech giant Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, French football star Thierry Henry, and other celebrities also participated in the round.
Neko Health was co-founded in 2018 by Swedish streaming platform Spotify founder Daniel Ek and entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, with the core goal of shifting healthcare from "passive treatment of disease" to "active prevention and early detection."
Daniel Ek has long been interested in the healthcare field. In his spare time, he reads medical journals and regularly measures various vital signs using wearable devices like Apple Watch and Wii Fit. The more he learned, the more dissatisfied he became with the current healthcare system.
Above from left to right: Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek
In 2018, Daniel Ek's Spotify went public, providing him with substantial funds and a sense that Spotify had transformed the entire music industry by creating products consumers truly wanted to use. He then wanted to do something similar in healthcare—using technology and engineering thinking to redesign a health-centered system.
Hjalmar Nilsonne is a well-known engineer in the Swedish startup scene. He previously founded energy data company Watty, focusing on machine learning and using data to solve energy problems. The two met at an industry event organized by Daniel Ek.
After five years of development, Neko Health's core product—the Neko Health Scan—was launched in 2023. It is a comprehensive, non-invasive, radiation-free health assessment service that takes 60 minutes. The scanning process uses the company's self-developed sensors and imaging devices, including Derma, Spectrum, and Echo. These three devices work together to collect tens of millions of data points from the skin, heart, blood, and circulatory system in a single scan, generating a report within five minutes that syncs to the Neko Health app. The company says the second-generation versions of Derma, Spectrum, and Echo will be deployed this year, with more devices under development.
Above: Neko Health analysis report
Neko Health adopts a fully vertically integrated business model, tightly controlling the entire process from equipment to experience. Therefore, when it launched its first product in 2023, the company simultaneously opened a physical clinic in Stockholm, where professional doctors provide report analysis and consultation services.
Currently, Neko Health has a total of eight clinics worldwide, covering cities including London, Birmingham, and Manchester in the UK. It plans to open a new clinic in New York, USA, this year.
The company's pricing varies by location: a single scan package costs £299 in the UK; and SEK 2,750 in Sweden, including a full scan, lab analysis, and clinical doctor's report analysis.
Above: Neko Health Manchester clinic
According to company data, over 350,000 people have registered for the Neko Health scan service, with more than 100,000 members having completed the experience. 75% of members pre-book and prepay for the next year's scan after their appointment.
Since its founding, Neko Health has raised a total of over $1 billion in funding, with investors including venture capital firms Lakestar, Atomico, General Catalyst, and Daniel Ek's personal investment company Prima Materia. After completing a $250 million Series B round in 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported the company's valuation at $1.8 billion.
| Source: Official press release, insidermedia, The New York Times
| Image source: Neko Health official Instagram