Neko Health's First U.S. Clinic Opens in New York, Its Ninth Location Overall
Preventive healthcare company Neko Health has opened its first U.S. clinic at 300 Lafayette Street in New York's Soho district, marking its ninth location overall, following establishments in Sweden and the UK. Lightspeed Venture Partners featured CEO and co-founder Hjalmar Nilsonne on the podcast Lightwork to discuss the company's origins and growth model: he had long avoided the healthcare industry until receiving a direct message from Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, asking, "What if we could redo healthcare from scratch?".
The scan is priced at $499 and can be paid for using HSA/FSA. The company claims that its hardware, software, and AI systems are self-developed to reduce costs, and Nilsonne hopes to continue lowering prices as technology improves. The one-hour, radiation-free process includes approximately 6,000 visible light and thermal imaging skin photos, cardiovascular assessments, body composition analysis, over 50 on-site biomarker blood tests, and interpretations by clinical staff before leaving the clinic. The official statement claims that about 1.2% of scans lead to life-saving interventions; there are over 25,000 people on the waiting list in New York, which he calculates could correspond to about 300 lives saved in the city alone.
The Soho clinic spans approximately 11,000 square feet, is two stories high, and features seven scanning rooms, with Newmark facilitating the lease. The expansion plan in the U.S. includes adding locations in Miami, Washington, and San Francisco after New York, with some construction already underway. In terms of financing, a $700 million Series C round led by Lightspeed and co-led by O.G. Venture Partners has been secured, with notable participants including Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Danny Meyer, Claudia Schiffer, Maria Sharapova, Thierry Henry, Tim Ferriss, and will.i.am. The company was founded in 2018 by Ek and Nilsonne, with openings in Stockholm in 2023 and London in 2024, and during the Series C round, it was reported that approximately 100,000 scans had been completed.
Nilsonne describes Neko as also being involved in real estate: the clinic's location, flow, and self-developed equipment are interconnected, eliminating the cuts taken by third-party imaging centers and outsourced laboratories. In the U.S., 60% of adults have chronic diseases, and 40% have more than one, with about 90% of healthcare spending going toward chronic diseases and mental health. The business model is self-paid preventive scans, which do not replace family doctors but allow results to be shared with the patient's physician.
Mechanically, the target customers are urban middle-class individuals willing to pay $499 for a comprehensive one-hour checkup, as opposed to traditional annual checkups that are billed through insurance and require specialist referrals. The event-driven aspect is the opening of the first U.S. store, replicating the scanning unit that has been successful in Europe into the high rents of Soho. Funding from the Series C equity round will go toward store renovations, self-developed equipment, and staffing for doctors; benefiting are Neko and leading investor Lightspeed, while traditional high-end checkups and membership-based healthcare are under pressure due to their cost structures that still involve outsourced imaging and laboratories. The promise of price reductions depends on store throughput and equipment depreciation, not on when insurance directories will include their services.
Source: Public Information
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Daniel Ek has demonstrated through Spotify the idea of "turning content into subscriptions"; Neko applies the same entry point thinking to healthcare: first standardizing the checkup into a one-hour process, then leveraging store density and vertical data to amortize hardware costs. Hjalmar Nilsonne, coming from a family of doctors, avoided the industry until Ek initiated the partnership, leading to over four years of self-developed equipment after the project was established in 2018, with validations in Stockholm in 2023 and London in 2024, and aiming for a $700 million investment led by Lightspeed in July 2026 to further enter the U.S. market. The investor list includes a mix of technology, sports, dining, and entertainment figures, indicating that the product is viewed as a lifestyle entry point, not just a clinic license.
The capital path is "equity to open stores, cash to sell scans, and data accumulation for refinancing." The $499 price must cover Soho rent, seven scanning rooms, on-site testing, and doctor consultations, while also leaving room for subsequent free specialist follow-ups. Self-developed hardware aims to eliminate third-party cuts, locking Neko into heavy assets: it is simultaneously a healthcare company, equipment manufacturer, and retail real estate operator. The 25,000-person waiting list reflects pre-sale demand, not confirmed annual retention; the 1.2% life-saving intervention rate is a conversion narrative used to frame the $499 fee as a necessity outside of optional spending. U.S. health insurance does not reimburse, and HSA/FSA is merely a tax shield, with scale depending on how many people are willing to pay again each year.
The comparison is not with another health check center but with membership clinics like One Medical before its acquisition by Amazon, self-paid blood tests from Function Health, and high-end full-body MRI scan facilities: all selling "knowing in advance" outside the insurance system. The difference is that Neko compresses skin, heart, metabolism, and blood tests into the same hour, using the same self-developed equipment, and openly targets "redoing healthcare" rather than supplementing annual checkups. The industry phase is shifting from validation in Europe to a site selection competition in the U.S., with Miami, Washington, and San Francisco already in line, and competitors including scanning spas planned by Midjourney and longevity packages like Fountain Life.
The structural judgment belongs to the reconstruction of the industry chain. Pricing power is shifting from insurance company directories and hospital checkup packages to consumer healthcare entry points that can build their own equipment and stores and charge per visit. The mechanism is that U.S. spending on chronic diseases is significant, but reimbursement for preventive care is weak; cash customers are willing to pay for experience and speed. Whoever controls scanning hardware and vertical data can drive prices down to levels that insurance will negotiate. The $499 price is for capturing the entry point, not the final cost.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Redoing healthcare from scratch often starts with self-paying to standardize checkups.
The clinic is located in Soho, selling time, not reimbursement directories.
Self-developed hardware is not for show; it is to eliminate the cuts of middle layers.