Neko Health‘s Neko Health US launch is set for 24 September, when the body-scanning company co-founded by Daniel Ek will open its first American clinic in SoHo, Manhattan, at 300 Lafayette Street, according to TechCrunch. The facility will span 11,000 square feet, the New York Post reported, making it a substantial physical footprint for a company selling a $500 preventative health scan that collects photos, blood samples, and electrical signals from the body and returns a health action plan within the hour.
What the Neko body scanner actually does
The scanner assesses a person’s risk of skin cancer, evaluates heart health, and checks visceral body fat and grip strength. Results are reviewed with a clinician on site. The company is clear that this is not a replacement for primary care: if a worrisome signal appears, the patient still needs to visit a conventional doctor’s office for follow-up care. Neko’s own data indicates that 80% of clients scanned so far have come out in good health and require no follow-up.
Dr Jordan Shlain, the founder of concierge medical practice Private Medical, tried the scanner at Neko’s London outpost and described it as feeling ‘a little Star Trek-y,’ like a high-tech ‘welcome mat to go get curious about yourself.’ As a doctor, though, he said he did not 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.’
Health tech investor and former journalist Chrissy Farr, who tried the scanner in Stockholm, wrote in her newsletter Second Opinion that she appreciated how it ‘makes predictions about how healthy you’ll be in the future, based on your lifestyle and scan readings today.’ She said the recommendations ‘felt data-driven and unique to me, even as I’d heard all of this before from primary care physicians,’ and called for a study on ‘whether it has a greater impact for people than simply hearing that they should make behavioral changes.’
Neko Health US launch backed by $700 million Series C
Neko arrived in the United States carrying considerable financial firepower. The company raised $700 million in Series C funding, with investors including Mark Zuckerberg, Maria Sharapova, Thierry Henry, and Tim Ferriss. At the time of that raise, Neko said 100,000 people had already been scanned, according to TechCrunch. The company has since reported that more than 350,000 people around the world have joined the waitlist to be scanned, including 25,000 in New York alone.
Neko co-founder Hjalmar Nilsonne told Business Insider that consumers’ ‘expectation of what healthcare is is changing.’ That shift is visible in the broader market: consumers are generating more personal health data than ever before, from wearables to direct-to-consumer blood tests and continuous glucose monitors. Neko sits alongside a cluster of other personalised health ventures reaching directly for consumers’ wallets, including Prenuvo’s $2,500 MRI, Function’s $500 blood test evaluating organ health, and Stelo’s $100 over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor.
Founded in 2018, Neko began scanning patients in Stockholm in 2023 and added a London clinic in 2024. The Neko Health US launch into New York, Shlain said, ‘speaks to this ascendancy of people wanting to take matters into their own hands and not trusting the system.’
Dr Andrea Maier, a longevity physician and professor of precision geromedicine at the National University of Singapore, 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.’ She told Business Insider the scan could be particularly useful for detecting skin cancer earlier, but noted it misses other aspects of longevity medicine, including genetic testing, microbiome sampling, VO2 max fitness markers, and skin elasticity. She was, however, enthusiastic about the data implications: ‘The database they are creating, it’s quite something,’ she 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.’
After New York, the company plans to have additional locations in Miami by the end of 2026, with Washington DC and San Francisco to follow.