Daniel Ek's Neko Health charges $499 a scan, 8.3 times BodySpec's $59.95 DEXA; the follow-up bill is unpriced
Neko Health's first US clinic charges $499 cash for an hour of scanning, 8.3 times BodySpec's $59.95 DEXA floor, while the follow-up bill for the 1 in 100 it flags lands somewhere else entirely.
Vincent Jiang · 4 min read
Daniel Ek got people to pay for music they used to pirate 1. Now the Spotify+0.10% — Spotify, up 0.10 percent today co-founder wants them to pay $499 to look at their own bodies 23. His company, Neko Health, opened its first US clinic in SoHo on September 24, 2026, after more than 25,000 New Yorkers queued ahead of launch; the line has since passed 50,000 23. The question the waitlist hides is the one the whole category rides on: is prevention a product people buy twice, or a scan they buy once?
The money on the table, and the floor under it
Neko's hour costs $499: a 53-marker blood panel, more than 6,000 photos of the skin that AI screens for suspicious moles, a heart and circulation check, and a clinician's walkthrough before you leave 2. Insurance does not pay, though health savings accounts cover it 1.
The floor beneath that price is BodySpec's mobile DEXA scan, an X-ray test of fat, muscle and bone sold out of vans for about a decade at around $50 1. BodySpec's own price list now shows $59.95 for one baseline scan, done in under 15 minutes, or $39.95 a month on a membership 4.
Between floor and ceiling sits the cash-pay ladder: Function Health's $365 annual membership buys two blood panels a year, about $182 per panel, fresh off a $450 million raise from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund 5; Prenuvo charges $2,499 for a whole-body MRI 1. Neko sells neither the cheapest test nor the deepest one. It sells the hour.
Neko's $499 sits about eight times above the $60 floor of cash-pay scanning
- Estimate
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| BodySpec DEXA, per scan | $59.95 |
| Function Health, per panel (estimate) | $182.50 |
| Neko Health scan, per visit | $499 |
| Prenuvo whole-body MRI | $2,499 |
What $960 million of venture money bought
The sum in the subhead is two rounds: a $260 million Series B in January 2025 and a $700 million Series C in July 2026, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan among the names attached 6. The category has buried its ancestors. Theranos promised answers from a finger prick and collapsed into a fraud conviction, and Jawbone, once valued at $3 billion, liquidated in 2017 1.
The capital is underwriting repeat visits, and on that score Neko's numbers are the best published in the category: 75% of members prepay for their next scan at the end of their first appointment, 80% after the second 6. More than 100,000 people have been scanned across Sweden and the UK 2. Demand is not in doubt: the second New York site, at Brookfield Place, opens in January 2027 3.
Venture money is betting on repeat scans, not one-time buyers
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Neko Health Series C | $700M |
| Function Health growth round | $450M |
| Prenuvo raise, 2025 | $120M |
The 1% who find out, and the bill that follows
Here is the complication. After more than 100,000 scans, Ek says about 1% of members had a serious undiagnosed condition, and Neko presents that as proof the product works 1. Finding a condition is not the same as extending a life.
The $499 buys the discovery; the diagnostics, the dermatologist and the treatment afterwards land on the patient or their insurance, and Neko hands members off to Mount Sinai, Columbia and other vetted systems 2. Business Insider's reporter was one of the fewer than one in ten customers referred out, a week and a half after her scan, for a mole a dermatologist should see 7.
Her verdict on the rest: if she had $500 extra to spend on her health, she would start with a gym membership, then consider a DEXA scan 7. The waitlist is made of people who disagree with her. Both things are true, and the follow-up bill is the part nobody prices.
The market's verdict is still pending
The public test is Oura, the smart ring maker, which filed to go public in late September and then postponed the IPO on September 29, 2026, despite 5.7 million paying members and 90% expected revenue growth for fiscal 2026; the filing had sought $2.2 billion at a fully diluted valuation near $15.6 billion 8. Oura blamed market uncertainty, not weak numbers 8. Until it lists, there is no public price for any of this.
Meanwhile a 2024 JAMA study found 40% of Americans wear a tracker, and a primary care doctor who treats homeless patients told the New York Times her patients wear none, because data only helps people with the money and agency to act on it 1.
Ek diagnosed insurers correctly: they will not fund a payoff that takes 10 to 20 years 1. That is why the scan lives on wallets instead. The number to watch is Neko's second-scan retention in the US, not the waitlist. A waitlist proves curiosity. Renewal proves a business.
What decides it next
Miami and the second New York site at Brookfield Place, set for January 2027, come next 73, and Washington DC and San Francisco are on the plan 2. Oura's bankers get another window to reprice the category 8. If Oura lists near $15 billion on 5.7 million subscribers, every scan investor reprices off that print 8. If it cannot, the private marks, Neko's reported $7 billion included 3, will be standing on the last buyer's bid.
A scan company is only a subscription if people come back without being frightened into it. Neko's 75% says they do, in Europe, on their own dime 6. New York gets to say whether that was Sweden, or just the product.
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