Is Neko Health’s body scan worth it? Spotify billionaire’s startup has come to America
- ID
- 30481
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 01 Oct 2026, 4:20 AM
- Fetched
- 01 Oct 2026, 4:26 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/video/is-neko-healths-body-scan-worth-it-spotify-billionaires-startup-has-come-to-america/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 2.5
- Created
- 01 Oct 2026, 4:26 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_startup_foundersai_ml_learners
What happened
TechCrunch's Equity podcast episode (Sept 30, 2026) examines Neko Health, the body-scanning startup from Spotify founder Daniel Ek that raised $700 million, and asks whether the scan is worth it as it expands into the US market. Host Dominic-Madori Davis speaks with Farooq Abbasi of Preface Ventures, an investor in Neko, about how it compares with other consumer preventative-health companies and what would have to happen for body scanning to be absorbed into the broader healthcare system. The episode also notes Midjourney is building its own body scanner and that Function Health has raised significant capital for a preventative-health platform.
Why it matters
There is nothing here for a working builder to act on: no pricing, no scan accuracy data, no availability outside the US, and no Malaysian or SEA angle. The only transferable signal is category-level — $700M went into consumer body scanning, Function Health raised significant capital for the same space, and Midjourney (an image-generation company) is building a scanner, which is a data point on how AI-adjacent companies are pushing into physical diagnostics. If you are weighing a healthtech idea, treat this as evidence that US consumer preventative health is heavily funded, not as evidence about local demand or regulatory feasibility.
Discussion angle
Midjourney, a generative-image company, is reportedly building a body scanner — is the interesting story here the $700M Neko round, or that AI tooling companies are drifting into physical diagnostics, and would that pattern repeat in Southeast Asia?