Why investors are betting $700M on Neko Health's whole-body scans

Neko Health, the startup founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek, is building a business around scanning your body. It has raised $700 million to pursue that goal, putting it at the center of a growing debate about preventative healthcare.

TechCrunch's Equity podcast brings that debate into focus with Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures and an investor in Neko Health. Abbasi invested in the company after trying the scan himself, and the episode examines what Neko's $500 scan actually includes and how the company keeps the price down. His broader argument: low primary-care utilization is one of the biggest problems in U.S. healthcare, and better health data could open the door to a new generation of AI-powered healthcare.

Neko is not alone in centering its roadmap on this new kind of preventative healthcare. Midjourney is building its own body scanner, and Function Health has also raised significant capital to build out its preventative-health platform. The convergence raises a question the episode tackles directly: why are investors betting so big on this category?

Abbasi also cautions that some consumer-health startups may be overfunded. The conversation covers how Neko compares with other consumer-health startups and what has to happen for body scanning to become part of the broader healthcare system. For now, the $700M round gives Neko a prominent place in that conversation, even as the investor behind it warns against overfunding in the wider sector.