Neko Health, the AI-powered full-body scan startup co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, has raised $700 million in a funding round co-led by Lightspeed and O.G. Venture Partners. The round values the company at roughly $7 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal.
The raise is the largest in the health AI space this year and comes as crypto markets sit in extreme fear — the Fear & Greed Index at 25. Bitcoin is trading at $64,800, down 3.4% in the past 24 hours, with altcoins underperforming under high BTC dominance.
The round
Lightspeed and O.G. Venture Partners co-led the Series C, with participation from existing backers. Neko Health offers AI-driven full-body scans that detect early signs of disease. The company has raised over $1 billion to date and plans to use the new capital to expand into new markets and scale its scanning technology.
📊 Market Data Snapshot
Daniel Ek, who co-founded Neko Health in 2018, remains chairman. The company has clinics in Sweden, the UK, and Germany, and says it has scanned more than 100,000 patients.
Lightspeed is a major crypto investor — it backed Solana, Alchemy, and several other blockchain startups. Its decision to co-lead a $700 million health AI round while crypto fundraising is sluggish sends a signal: top-tier VCs are reallocating dry powder to non-crypto verticals.
That's a problem for crypto startups. If Lightspeed and others are writing bigger checks to AI and health companies, the pool of capital available for blockchain projects shrinks. The $7 billion valuation for Neko Health — higher than most crypto unicorns — suggests VCs see better risk-adjusted returns in real-world AI applications right now.
This isn't a direct hit to crypto prices. But it's a leading indicator for the funding environment. Crypto projects that haven't raised yet may face a longer, colder winter.
What most media missed
Neko Health's scans generate massive amounts of sensitive health data. The company will need secure storage and compute. If it chooses decentralized solutions like Filecoin or Akash, that would be a real catalyst for those tokens. But the company hasn't disclosed its tech stack, and there's no blockchain integration in its current model.
Still, the valuation gap is striking. Neko Health, with likely minimal revenue, commands a ~10x higher valuation than Fetch.ai or Render. That could mean either traditional VCs are overpaying, or crypto AI tokens are deeply undervalued. For traders, the narrative could push AI tokens higher if they show similar traction.
Neko Health plans to open clinics in the U.S. and Asia by mid-2027. For crypto, the next test is whether any of the AI tokens can secure a similar high-profile partnership or funding round. Until then, the capital rotation out of crypto and into health AI is a quiet but real trend.
