Neko Health Opens Its First US Clinic in New York This September
Neko Health, the Swedish health-tech company co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, will open its first US location at 300 Lafayette Street in New York's SoHo neighborhood on September 24, 2026. TechCrunch The company says more than 25,000 New Yorkers have joined a waitlist for the location.
Neko was co-founded in 2018 by Ek and Nilsonne, who serves as CEO. The company describes itself as a Swedish health-tech company. Neko Health It currently operates clinics in the UK and Sweden, with a Birmingham location having opened earlier in 2026. Neko Health
The company's core product is a proprietary body-scanning system paired with bloodwork and data pulled from fitness devices to produce a comprehensive health assessment. TechCrunch Neko has said that 100,000 people have already received scans through its existing clinics.
In July 2026, Neko closed a $700 million Series C round. The company's total funding to date exceeds $1 billion. TechCrunch The funding is earmarked to finance the New York clinic, which the company first confirmed in a January 14, 2026 announcement. Neko Health
In March 2026, Neko appointed Dr. Sunita Mishra as Chief Medical Officer, a hire that signals the company is building out a clinical leadership bench ahead of its US launch. Neko Health
Neko is not the only technology company pursuing physical body-scanning infrastructure. Midjourney is developing a body scanner it plans to integrate into a spa experience, with a San Francisco opening targeted for 2027. TechCrunch
The broader context here is that Neko's US expansion tests whether a high-touch, hardware-enabled preventive health service can scale in a market with a fragmented healthcare payment system. The 25,000-person waitlist in a single city suggests genuine consumer demand. Whether that demand converts to a sustainable business depends on factors the company has not yet disclosed: per-scan pricing, insurance positioning, and the regulatory pathway for any diagnostic claims the system makes under FDA oversight.
The competitive landscape is also still forming. Midjourney's spa-integrated scanner points to a wellness-positioned entry, while Neko's pairing of proprietary imaging with bloodwork and wearable data tilts toward a clinical-diagnostics framing. Those are different market propositions, but both bet on the same underlying thesis: that consumers will pay out of pocket for preventive health data that the existing primary care system does not routinely provide.
Neko's funding trajectory gives it a long runway. A billion dollars in total funding for a company operating a handful of clinics is a substantial capital commitment to physical infrastructure, hardware development, and clinical operations. The Series C specifically provides the resources to execute on the New York opening without immediate pressure to prove unit economics at scale.
In my view, the regulatory dimension deserves attention. Neko's existing operations in Sweden and the UK operate under EU and NHS-adjacent regulatory frameworks. The US market introduces a different set of constraints, particularly around what health claims the company can make for its scanning technology and how data from bloodwork and consumer fitness devices is handled under HIPAA. The appointment of a Chief Medical Officer with US clinical context, rather than a purely technical hire, suggests the company is attentive to this.
The September 24 opening will be the first concrete data point on whether Neko's model translates to US consumers. The waitlist provides a leading indicator of interest; what follows will be whether those sign-ups convert to paying customers and what the repeat-scan rate looks like after the first visit.
