Neko Health Receives Financial Support from Notable Investors, Led by Spotify CEO
Neko Health, the medical diagnostics company which was co-founded by Daniel Ek, the Chief Executive Officer of Spotify Technology SA, has secured €60 million ($65.4 million) in venture capital funding. This investment will enable the company to expand its operations beyond Sweden.
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom joins the company’s board with his investment vehicle Atomico, as does Klaus Hommels, whose venture capital firm Lakestar led the seed investment. Palo Alto-based General Catalyst also participated. Neko Health did not disclose the valuation.
“I have spent more than 10 years exploring the untapped potential of healthcare innovation,” Ek said in a statement ahead of the announcement on Wednesday. “We are dedicated to building a health care system that focuses on prevention and patient care, with the goal of serving not only our generation but the next.”
Neko Health operates private clinics equipped with proprietary and off-the-shelf diagnostic products, most notably its own full-body 3D scanner. It contains dozens of sensors that, when combined with the company’s artificial intelligence software, can provide immediate results on possible skin conditions, such as moles, as well as warning signs of cardiovascular health.
The company’s first clinic was opened in February in Stockholm. The patient pays €250 for the full-body examination, which takes 10-20 minutes, after which the examination is done with the doctor. The company has completed more than 1,000 scans since launch, but Nilsonne says thousands more are on a waiting list. About 80% of customers have paid in advance for follow-up examinations performed after one year.
“We have our own nurses, doctors and specialists,” Hjalmar Nilsonne, co-founder and CEO of Neko Health, said in an interview. “We have dermatologists on staff just to look at skin photos. We have a doctor on hand who can make sound medical decisions about anything that comes up.”
Covid-19 had been a boon for companies like telehealth startup Ro – also backed by General Catalyst – as patients sought virtual care from their homes. But Neko Health is focusing on clinic evaluation for now, with on-site medical experts evaluating and advising on client outcomes, Nilsonne said.
“I come from a family of doctors,” he said. “My grandfather had his own clinic here in Stockholm over a hundred years ago, both of my parents are doctors and professors, and my oldest brother is a doctor and neuroscientist. This is very much the world I grew up in.”
The same couldn’t be said for Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos. Investor scrutiny of health tech startups is likely to increase in the wake of the scandal, but Nilsonne said he is confident Neko Health’s backers will see the different approach he and Ek take.
“Everything they did was secret,” he said of Theranos. “We’re pretty transparent about what we do and how it works.”
Nilsonne said Ek contacted him in 2018, around the time of Spotify’s IPO and when Nilsonne’s previous company, Watty, was wound up before being sold to a German buyer, though the deal ultimately fell through.
“Dan thought, ‘How can I do something good for the world?'” Nilsonne said. “It was 2018 and we didn’t have a plan of what to really do, but we started talking and he said, ‘You know, we should really do something in health care.’
Nilsonne said that the additional investments will go to building clinics in other European countries. On the careers page of the company’s website, on July 3, there was an opening for a doctor in London, whose main duties include “managing the process of opening a private medical practice.”
