Five Hundred Dollar Body Scans Arrive in New York City

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek has brought his body-scan startup to America. On September 24, 2026, Neko Health opened its first United States clinic at 300 Lafayette Street in SoHo, selling hour-long body scans to a city where more than twenty-five thousand people had already joined the waitlist, according to the company's launch announcement.

The pitch is prevention as a product. Neko promises a full picture of your health in a single visit, with results explained by a clinician before you walk out the door. The company says it has already delivered more than one hundred thousand of the appointments across Sweden and the United Kingdom, where it opened its first clinic in Stockholm in 2023. Three-quarters of first-time visitors book and prepay for their next visit before leaving, and eight in ten of those who return for a second session book a third, according to the company. Ek founded Neko with chief executive Hjalmar Nilsonne, who has argued that a system built around prevention beats one built around reaction — telling Inc. that the company's first job in America is to prove preventive care can work at scale.

What an hour of body scans actually includes

The visit is split into two acts: roughly half an hour of tests, then a similar block of one-on-one clinician time. The scan itself is radiation-free. A pod fitted with proprietary cameras captures thousands of skin images precise enough to flag changes as small as 0.2 millimeters, while cuffs on all four limbs measure blood pressure and circulation. Rapid on-site bloodwork covers more than fifty markers, and grip strength and eye pressure get checked too. Everything lands in an app you can track year over year, and the clinic accepts health savings and flexible spending account funds toward the $499 charge.

Neko confirmed the September opening and the waitlist figures in August, as TechCrunch reported. The New York debut follows a $700 million Series C round in July led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Ek marked launch day himself on social media. He told Fit Tech Global that the city was the starting point because its residents "place an incredible value on their time."

Body scans vs. the competition: Prenuvo and Function

Neko is entering a crowded field. Prenuvo, the best-known name in full-body MRI, lists its whole-body scan at $2,499 — roughly five times the SoHo price — with its most comprehensive packages climbing into the high four figures, according to a September comparison of listed prices. Function Health takes the opposite approach: a $365-a-year membership built on extensive lab panels, with full-body scans available through Ezra, the imaging startup it acquired, for well under a thousand dollars. The lab-membership company was co-founded by wellness podcaster Mark Hyman. Neko's bet is that most buyers want neither an MRI tube nor a lab subscription — just one polished hour of body scans, results included.

The skeptical case: do body scans beat a free physical?

As reported by Business Insider, reporter Hilary Brueck tried the SoHo scan before opening day and came away impressed by the experience — the robe, the pacing, the unhurried doctor time — but unconvinced by the value. Her conclusion: the testing largely overlapped with what a free preventive annual exam already covers, and under the Affordable Care Act those in-network checkups cost patients nothing. The scan was "a lot of fun," she wrote, but "a little too basic" for anyone already paying attention to their health. Her verdict favored a gym membership and a body-composition scan instead.

She did flag one standout: the mole mapping. With a family history of melanoma, Brueck called the skin imaging potentially the most valuable part of her visit — though she noted it was a pricey route to screening that often costs little or nothing with insurance. Fewer than one in ten Neko customers are referred out for follow-up, and only about one percent turn up something life-threatening, according to company figures cited in the piece. Neko's five-hundred-dollar price tag, meanwhile, stays entirely out of pocket.

The deeper criticism is about evidence. Neko's own member-data report acknowledges its analysis had no control group or randomized trial, which means its claims about improving blood pressure and cholesterol over time are observational — interesting, but not proof the appointments change health outcomes. Researchers who study private screening add that testing healthy people inevitably surfaces borderline results: roughly five percent of healthy people fall outside reference ranges even when nothing is wrong, according to Imperial College London primary care professor Azeem Majeed, in comments to iNews. And Neko is explicit that it does not diagnose or treat — suspicious findings go to outside specialists — with its U.S. terms noting the clinic is not a full-service practice and does not bill insurance.

So who are body scans actually for?

If you are young, healthy and already see a primary-care doctor every year, the honest answer may be nobody you know — the overlap with a free annual physical is the story's real punchline. If you pay out of pocket for dermatology visits, face monthslong waits for specialists, or simply want one morning that forces you to confront your metabolic health with real numbers, the calculus shifts. Miami is next on the expansion list, followed by Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, according to the company's plans — so anyone outside New York can afford to watch and wait.

The appetite for body scans is clearly there either way. Gen Z already spends more than a thousand dollars a year on wellness products and trackers that rarely change behavior, as GenZ NewZ previously reported — Neko is betting that a shinier package around the same data will finally move the needle. For more on the science of staying ahead of illness, browse the Health topic page.