• The $700m Series C priced Neko Health near $7bn per Axios, up from the $1.8bn set by its January 2025 Series B — close to a fourfold step-up in eighteen months.
• Confirmed traction: over 100,000 completed scans, a 350,000-person waitlist, and roughly 75% of members prepaying to renew, per Tech.eu.
• Neko told Sifted it is 'profitable at clinic level' with 100,000 members — a company claim carried in Sifted's own interview headline, not an audited disclosure.
• Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners co-led the round; Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar returned alongside three new backers.
• The capital funds Neko's first US clinic, planned for New York — its highest-stakes market test outside the UK and Sweden.

Neko Health topped Sifted's 2026 Nordics ranking days after closing a $700m Series C that Axios reported priced the Stockholm-founded body-scanning startup near $7bn — a fourfold jump from the $1.8bn valuation set eighteen months earlier. The two events are not the same claim: one is a funding round, the other a growth ranking whose methodology this piece could not independently confirm. What ties them together is the traction Neko is now citing to justify both: over 100,000 completed scans, a 350,000-person waitlist, and roughly 75% of members prepaying to renew.

The raise

Neko Health closed a $700m Series C on 15 July 2026, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners, with existing backers Atomico, General Catalyst and Lakestar returning alongside new investors Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum and BDT & MSD, per TechCrunch. Axios reported the round priced the company near $7bn — up from the $1.8bn valuation set by its $260m Series B in January 2025, when Lightspeed also led. That is close to a fourfold step-up in eighteen months, in a healthtech market where most valuations have compressed this cycle, not expanded.

The ranking

Sifted, the European startup-news publisher backed by the Financial Times, reported that Neko Health topped its 2026 Nordics ranking, per the outlet's own headline. Sifted's methodology for that specific list could not be independently verified for this piece — its ranking article returned an access error on repeated attempts to fetch it directly. What is confirmed independently is the timing: the ranking news landed within days of Neko's $700m raise, giving the round a growth-signal backdrop that the funding headline alone does not supply.

The unit economics

The $7bn price tag was not only about growth — it leans on retention. Neko told Sifted it now has 100,000 members and is 'profitable at clinic level,' per the headline of Sifted's interview with the company; that is Neko's own on-record statement, not an audited disclosure. Tech.eu separately reports roughly 75% of members book and prepay for a second year's scan, at pricing of £299 in the UK and 2,750 SEK in Sweden — a renewal rate closer to subscription software than to elective healthcare.

The bet

The $700m funds Neko's first US clinic, planned for New York, per TechCrunch, alongside investment in its next hardware generation — Tech.eu names the devices Derma-2, Echo-2 and Spectrum-2, consistent with a strategy of building proprietary scanning equipment rather than licensing third-party imaging tools. Neko currently operates UK sites including London, Manchester and Birmingham, and clinics in Sweden, per Tech.eu. The wager is whether its per-clinic economics hold once it leaves two established home markets for a fragmented, insurer-mediated US system it has not yet tested.

Verdict

On the confirmed numbers — the $700m raise, the roughly 75% prepay rate, the scan and waitlist volumes — Neko Health's traction case is real, not just a Daniel Ek headline. Its clinic-level profitability claim rests on the company's own word to Sifted rather than an audited filing, and the exact $7bn figure traces to Axios's reporting rather than a disclosed cap table. Sifted's ranking claim is this story's news peg but its methodology could not be independently checked. The raise itself is the solid part: investors are now pricing flawless US execution into a company with no operating history outside the UK and Sweden.