Niklas Zennström, founding partner of VC firm Atomico, has left the board of Daniel Ek’s body scanning startup Neko Health.
Bejul Somaia, partner at US VC Lightspeed — which led the startup’s $260m Series B in January this year — is taking a seat on the board instead, according to local media Dagens Industri (Di).
Atomico first invested in the startup’s €60m Series A in 2023 and followed on at the latest round, which valued the startup at a whopping $1.7bn.
The board now consists of Ek, cofounder and CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne, Somaia and Lakestar partner Klaus Hommels, who first invested in 2023, at the same time as Atomico.
Healthy interest
Neko Health founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne in 2018, is a preventative healthtech business offering full-body health scans. Since launching its first body scanning facility in Stockholm in 2023, over 10k people have been scanned. Global demand is high, with an additional 100k individuals on the waiting list, according to the company.
Last year, Neko launched in London, and plans to open more clinics in the coming months — in Europe as well as the US, the third largest country in terms of its waiting list.
Zennström has been a proud backer of Neko Health and Ek’s entrepreneurship.
“I’ve worked with many founders, and it’s been amazing to work with [Ek] on Neko, he’s extraordinary,” Zennström told Sifted last month.
“It is standard practice in the venture capital world for early investors to step aside to make room on the board for those who led later capital rounds,” an Atomico spokesperson told Di.
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