Neko Well being, the medical diagnostics firm co-founded by Spotify Know-how SA Chief Government Officer Daniel Ek, raised €60 million ($65.4 million) in enterprise capital to develop exterior its house nation of Sweden.
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom will be a part of the corporate’s board because of his funding car, Atomico, taking part within the spherical, as will Klaus Hommels, whose VC agency Lakestar led the early-stage funding. Palo Alto-based Common Catalyst additionally participated. Neko Well being did not disclose a valuation.
“I’ve spent greater than 10 years exploring the untapped potential of health-care innovation,” Ek stated in a press release forward of the announcement on Wednesday. “We’re devoted to constructing a health-care system that focuses on prevention and affected person care, aiming to serve not simply our era, however those who comply with.”
Neko Well being runs non-public clinics kitted out with proprietary and off-the-shelf diagnostic merchandise, most notably its personal full-body 3D scanner. It incorporates dozens of sensors that, when mixed with the corporate’s synthetic intelligence software program, can provide immediate outcomes about potential pores and skin circumstances, resembling moles, in addition to warning indicators associated to cardiovascular well being.
The corporate’s first clinic opened in February in Stockholm. Sufferers pay €250 for a full-body examination that takes 10-to-20 minutes, adopted by a evaluate with a physician. The corporate has carried out greater than 1,000 scans since launch, however Nilsonne stated 1000’s extra are on a ready checklist. About 80% of consumers have pre-paid for follow-up scans in a 12 months’s time.
“We now have our personal nurses, docs and specialists,” Hjalmar Nilsonne, Neko Well being’s different co-founder and its CEO, stated in an interview. “We now have dermatologists employed simply to evaluate the pores and skin photos. We now have a physician on website who could make certified medical judgments for something that comes up.”
Covid-19 had been a boon for firms like telehealth startup Ro — additionally backed by Common Catalyst — as sufferers sought digital care from the protection of their properties. However Neko Well being will concentrate on in-clinic evaluation for now, with on-site medical consultants to evaluate and advise shopper outcomes, Nilsonne stated.
“I come from a household of docs,” he stated. “My grandfather had his personal clinic right here in Stockholm over 100 years in the past, each of my dad and mom are docs and professors, and my oldest brother is a physician and a neuroscientist. That is very a lot the world I grew up in.”
The identical could not be stated of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founding father of blood-testing startup Theranos. Investor scrutiny of health-tech startups is prone to be heightened within the wake of that scandal, however Nilsonne stated he is assured Neko Well being’s backers see how totally different an method he and Ek are taking.
“The whole lot they did was a secret,” he stated of Theranos. “We’re fairly darn clear about what we do and the way it works.”
Nilsonne stated Ek contacted him in 2018, across the time of Spotify’s IPO and as Nilsonne’s earlier firm, Watty, was being wound up forward of a sale to a German purchaser, though that deal in the end fell by.
“Dan was eager about ‘how do I do one thing good for the world?’” Nilsonne stated. “It was 2018 and there was no plan for what to do actually, however we began speaking and he was saying ‘you recognize, we must always actually do one thing in well being care.’”
Nilsonne stated the extra funding will go towards constructing clinics in different international locations throughout Europe. The careers web page on the corporate’s web site on July 3 included a gap for a physician in London, whose most important duties embody “managing the method of opening a personal medical clinic.”
