Four men who never worked in medicine have built or announced a full-body scanning company. Daniel Ek built Spotify. David Holz built Midjourney. Andrew Lacy built an iPhone game studio. Emi Gal built a video-advertising company. Two numbers explain the timing better than any of their biographies do: the price of a full-body MRI fell from $1,500 to $499 in a single announcement in May 2025, and the newest entrant claims it will image a body in sixty seconds. What has not moved in the same window is the published evidence for scanning a healthy person at all.

This piece records the pattern and the counterweights together. It does not recommend a scan, does not discourage one, and does not treat any company here as better or worse than another.

Which technology founders are starting body-scanning companies?

Four, with four different backgrounds and no clinical training among them.

Daniel Ek co-founded Spotify, then co-founded Neko Health with Hjalmar Nilsonne in 2018 and launched it in 2023.1 In July 2026 Neko raised $700 million in a Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners, in a round reported to bring the company close to a $7 billion valuation, up from the $1.7 to $1.8 billion valuation attached to its $260 million round in January 2025.234 Neko stated at the time of the round that more than 350,000 people had either registered for its waitlist or set an appointment.2 Ek is separately an investor in Sand Clinic, a Stockholm longevity clinic founded by Anna Levander and Jennie Sandqvist, in which Ek and Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon each hold a reported 25 percent stake following a €4.3 million investment.5 Ek is a backer of Sand Clinic, not its founder, and the distinction is worth keeping straight. See Sand Clinic.

David Holz founded Midjourney, the text-to-image lab, and on June 18, 2026 announced Midjourney Medical and a full-body ultrasound scanner.6 Holz has no healthcare history. Midjourney Medical is the newest entrant in this group by roughly eight years, and it is the only one whose founder arrived in the category without having previously built anything in health.

Andrew Lacy founded Prenuvo, the company that did most to make whole-body MRI a consumer product in North America. Before that, in 2007, he co-founded Tapulous in Palo Alto, the iPhone game studio behind Tap Tap Revenge, which reached 35 million downloads before Disney acquired the company in July 2010.78 Lacy was a McKinsey consultant before Tapulous and holds a Stanford MBA.8 See Prenuvo.

Emi Gal founded Ezra in 2018. In 2006, at nineteen, he had founded Brainient, an interactive video-advertising company that became the largest video ad server in Europe and was acquired by Teads in 2016, after which Gal spent two years running Teads Studio.9 Function Health acquired Ezra in May 2025.10 See Ezra.

A music company, an image-generation lab, a mobile game and an adtech firm. Not a physician or a radiologist among the four.

How fast and how cheap has the full-body scan become?

This is the part of the story with hard, dated numbers, and it is moving faster than anything else in the category.

When Function Health acquired Ezra in May 2025, it announced that it would cut the full-body MRI from 60 minutes to 22 minutes and from $1,500 to $499.10 That is a roughly two-thirds cut in price and time announced in a single transaction. The Atlas has recorded the wider version of that collapse separately, in the scan getting cheaper than the appointment.

Neko Health publishes 2,750 kronor for its scan in Sweden and £299 in the United Kingdom, with United States pricing not published as of July 2026 and coverage of the July round suggesting it may sit above the UK figure.1112 The Neko scan runs about an hour and includes, per the company’s own site, a full-body sensor scan capturing more than two thousand skin images with mole mapping, arterial and circulation analysis, an ECG, blood pressure, on-site blood analysis, body composition and grip strength, with a clinician reviewing results in the same visit.11

Midjourney’s claim is the largest and the least tested. The announced device lowers a person on a platform into a shallow pool of water ringed with roughly half a million ultrasonic sensors, firing soundwaves through the body from every angle, and is claimed to produce a complete body image in about 60 seconds with no radiation and no magnetic field.613 Midjourney calls the approach “ultrasonic CT.”14 The scanner prototype incorporates 40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip imaging modules per system, licensed from the publicly traded ultrasound maker Butterfly Network under a co-development agreement.15 Butterfly disclosed the terms in a Form 8-K filed November 17, 2025: up to $74 million in expected payments over a five-year term, comprising a one-time fee of $15 million, a $10 million annual licensing fee and up to $9 million tied to milestones.14 Midjourney’s stated goal is to deploy around 50,000 scanners worldwide over six years and to run a billion full-body scans every month.614

The imaging inside these companies is bought, licensed or decades old. Midjourney licensed Butterfly’s existing ultrasound-on-a-chip hardware rather than developing a sensor.1514 Prenuvo and Ezra rest on MRI, a technology that has existed for decades; the innovation there was never the magnet, it was applying it to screening healthy people rather than diagnosing sick ones.

Is Midjourney Medical open?

No, and the distinction matters enough to state plainly.

As of August 2026, Midjourney Medical is announced, not operating. Midjourney has described a 25,000-square-foot Midjourney Spa in San Francisco, with hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges and a gym, and stated that the first location will open in 2027.616 Holz has said he hopes to place ten scanners in the Union Square site before the end of 2027.6 The first clinic is slated for the Bay Area.14

Everything published about the device is therefore a stated goal rather than a measured result. The 60-second scan time, the 50,000 units, the billion scans a month and the half-million sensors are company claims about a product that has not yet screened a paying member of the public. No peer-reviewed evaluation of the device has been published. The Atlas does not record Midjourney Medical as an operating organization, and no reader should treat the announcement as a product they can currently buy.

Midjourney’s own framing of the scan is worth quoting because it describes the business model rather than the medicine. The company describes the scan as “a side-effect. You barely think of them when going to the spa. But suddenly, you have a huge library of data about your health.”17

Has the evidence for screening healthy people moved?

It has not, and this is the counterweight the price collapse does not carry with it.

The American College of Radiology stated in 2023 that there is no documented evidence that total body screening is cost-efficient or effective in prolonging life, and raised the absence of standardized imaging protocols, the risk of overdiagnosis, false positives and costly follow-up care.18 The same position supports whole-body MRI for defined high-risk populations, including people with Li-Fraumeni syndrome and other hereditary cancer syndromes.18 The distinction the ACR draws is between screening a person with a known reason to be screened and screening the general asymptomatic public, and it is the second activity that the consumer market sells.

The numbers behind that position have been stable for years. A 2019 systematic review of whole-body MRI screening in asymptomatic people found critical and indeterminate incidental findings in a pooled 32.1 percent of subjects and a pooled false-positive proportion of 16.0 percent, with the authors noting that the false-positive proportion appears substantial and that verification data are lacking.19 A scan that flags something in roughly one person in three, most of it nothing, is not a neutral reassurance purchase. It is a generator of follow-up: more imaging, sometimes a biopsy, each with its own small risk, chasing a finding that was never going to shorten the person’s life. The Atlas has recorded the same figures against the Swedish market, where the country’s own evidence agency states there is no scientific support for offering general health checks to healthy people.20

Two honest qualifications belong here. The first is that this evidence concerns whole-body MRI and CT, and Midjourney’s announced device is ultrasound, which carries no ionizing radiation and is not the modality the reviewed literature studied. That is not a point in the device’s favour on evidence; it means there is no published evidence about it either way, which is a weaker position than being studied and found wanting. The second is that none of this establishes that a scan is worthless. Real findings are caught early, and established blood markers read by a physician catch real risk. What the record shows is that the cost of buying a scan has fallen by roughly two-thirds in about a year while the published case for buying one when you are healthy and asymptomatic has not changed at all. Those two curves are moving independently, and only one of them is in the marketing.

What happened to the founder who built the clinic instead?

Eternal is the counterexample inside the pattern, and it closed.

Alex Mather co-founded the sports-media company The Athletic, then founded Eternal on the same consumer-subscription instincts as the other founders here. Eternal raised $13.25 million and built the full clinical stack rather than licensing a scanner and wrapping it in a membership: DEXA and VO2 max diagnostics, physician-led care, physical sites in San Francisco and New York, and continuous support.2122 In July 2026 it told members it was winding down, and Mather wrote that the company was “not able to build a sustainable business to support our long-term vision.”22 Eternal explored several directions first, including moving beyond physical clinics into digital care and AI coaching, before deciding to close.22 The Atlas recorded the closure at the time in the first one closed. See Eternal.

One closure is not a verdict on the category, and it should not be read as one. Neko raised $700 million in the same month Eternal wound down.222 What Eternal’s close is evidence about is which part of the business carries fixed cost. The scan is a unit that gets cheaper with volume and better hardware. The clinic behind the scan, the physicians, the premises, the follow-up when a scan finds something, is a cost that does not fall the same way. That is also the part of the machine the incidental-findings literature describes, because a finding still has to be read, explained and worked up by a clinician, and that step runs through the same healthcare system a consumer funnel is built to route around.

What the pattern actually shows

Three things, none of them a verdict on whether you should be scanned.

The founders arriving in this category are consumer-distribution builders, and they keep arriving because the imaging has become a component to buy or license rather than a problem to solve. Midjourney’s $74 million agreement with Butterfly Network is the clearest single illustration: the newest and loudest entrant did not build a sensor, it licensed one and put a spa around it.1415

The scan is collapsing in time and price, and the collapse is real, dated and verifiable. Sixty minutes to twenty-two, $1,500 to $499, in one May 2025 announcement, with a sixty-second claim now on the table for 2027.106

The evidence base has not collapsed with it. The ACR’s position and the incidental-findings numbers are where they were before any of this money arrived.1819 A cheaper scan is a cheaper scan. It is not a better-supported one, and the newest entrant, whose founder has no healthcare history and whose product has not screened anyone, is the furthest of the four from having shown otherwise.

The Atlas of the Healthspan Economy is a neutral record of organizations working on healthspan. It does not recommend a scan or any provider. See Prenuvo, Ezra, Eternal, Sand Clinic and the Healthtech and Diagnostics pillar, and read the methodology.

A note on what this piece does not claim. Nothing here recommends or discourages full-body scanning, and nothing here is medical advice. Midjourney Medical is announced and not open; its stated specifications are goals rather than measured results, no peer-reviewed evidence for the device has been published, and it is not recorded in the Atlas as an operating organization. The incidental-findings and cost-effectiveness evidence cited concerns whole-body MRI and CT, not the announced ultrasound device, for which no published evidence exists in either direction. Eternal’s closure is not treated as a verdict on demand for the category, which this Atlas records as expanding elsewhere in the same period. No founder here is criticised for lacking a medical background; the absence is recorded as a fact about the category, not a judgment about a person.

Footnotes

  1. Neko Health, co-founded by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne in 2018 and launched in 2023. Company history as recorded in the Atlas and in contemporaneous coverage of the company’s launch. The Atlas records Neko Health as two Stockholm premises rather than a single company row, so no single entity link is given here. ↩

  2. TechCrunch, “Daniel Ek’s body-scanning startup Neko Health raises another $700M,” July 15, 2026. Series C of $700 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners, with Atomico, General Catalyst, Lakestar, Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum and BDT & MSD participating; “more than 350,000 people have either registered for the waitlist or set an appointment.” The article does not state a post-round valuation. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/15/daniel-eks-body-scanning-startup-neko-health-raises-another-700m/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Prism News, “Daniel Ek’s Neko Health raises $700 million, nears $7 billion valuation,” July 2026. The near-$7 billion figure is reported, not company-confirmed, and is stated here as reporting. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://www.prismnews.com/news/daniel-eks-neko-health-raises-700-million-nears-7-billion ↩

  4. TechCrunch, January 22, 2025, reporting Neko’s $260 million round at a $1.8 billion valuation; Bloomberg reported the same round at $1.7 billion. Both figures are given because the two reports differ. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/neko-the-body-scanning-startup-co-founded-by-spotifys-daniel-ek-snaps-up-260m-at-a-1-8b-valuation ↩

  5. Sifted, “Exclusive: Daniel Ek’s new bet on longevity,” and Longevity.Technology, “Spotify founders back new Swedish longevity clinic,” reporting a €4.3 million investment in Stockholm’s Sand Clinic with Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon each holding a reported 25 percent stake. Sand Clinic was founded by Anna Levander and Jennie Sandqvist. Ek’s role is that of investor, not founder. https://sifted.eu/articles/daniel-ek-spotify-sand-clinic-longevity-news ↩

  6. Midjourney Medical, announced June 18, 2026. Scanner description (platform lowered into a shallow pool of water ringed with roughly half a million ultrasonic sensors, complete body image in about 60 seconds, no radiation and no magnetic field), the 25,000-square-foot San Francisco Midjourney Spa opening stated for 2027, David Holz’s stated hope of ten scanners in the Union Square location before the end of 2027, and the stated goals of roughly 50,000 scanners worldwide over six years and a billion full-body scans a month. Company announcement and contemporaneous coverage. https://www.midjourney.com/medical ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. Tapulous, founded in Palo Alto in 2007; flagship title Tap Tap Revenge reached 35 million downloads; acquired by The Walt Disney Company in July 2010, after which Andrew Lacy ran mobile business development for Disney. ↩

  8. Andrew Lacy, founder and chief executive of Prenuvo; previously co-founder of Tapulous and a consultant at McKinsey & Company; MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Company and speaker-profile sources. https://theorg.com/org/prenuvo/org-chart/andrew-lacy ↩ ↩2

  9. Emi Gal, founder of Ezra (2018); previously founder of Brainient (2006), which became the largest video ad server in Europe and was acquired by Teads in 2016, after which Gal spent two years as chief executive of Teads Studio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emi_Gal ↩

  10. Function Health, “Function Health Acquires Ezra, Introduces $499 Full-Body MRI Scan,” PR Newswire, May 2025. Stated reduction of the full-body MRI from 60 minutes to 22 minutes and from $1,500 to $499. Figures are the acquirer’s own announcement. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/function-health-acquires-ezra-introduces-499-full-body-mri-scan-302446016.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Neko Health, official site, service and pricing pages. Scan description and Swedish price of 2,750 kronor as published on the company’s own site; United Kingdom price published at £299. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://www.nekohealth.com/ ↩ ↩2

  12. PYMNTS, “Neko Health Eyes US Health Markets With Full-Body Scans,” 2026, reporting that United States pricing was not set as of July 2026 and was expected to sit above the UK equivalent. Reported expectation, not a company price. https://www.pymnts.com/healthcare/2026/neko-health-eyes-us-health-markets-with-full-body-scans/ ↩

  13. BetaNews, “Midjourney unveils 60-second body scanner,” June 2026. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://betanews.com/article/midjourney-60-second-body-scanner/ ↩

  14. Radiology Business, “AI lab Midjourney investing over $74M to launch whole-body ultrasound screening business,” June 2026. Butterfly Network Form 8-K filed November 17, 2025 disclosing up to $74 million in expected payments over a five-year term: a one-time fee of $15 million, a $10 million annual licensing fee and up to $9 million tied to milestones. Also records Midjourney’s “ultrasonic CT” framing, the first clinic slated for the Bay Area, and the 50,000-scanner six-year goal. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://radiologybusiness.com/topics/healthcare-management/healthcare-economics/ai-lab-midjourney-investing-over-74m-launch-whole-body-ultrasound-screening-business ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  15. Butterfly Network, press release and investor commentary on the Midjourney Medical announcement, June 18, 2026, stating that the scanner prototype incorporates 40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip imaging modules per system, licensed under a co-development agreement. https://ir.butterflynetwork.com/News/press-releases/news-details/2026/Butterfly-Network-Provides-Commentary-on-Midjourney-Medicals-Full-Body-Ultrasound-Scanner-Announcement/default.aspx ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. Let’s Data Science, “Midjourney Launches Full-Body Ultrasound Scanner, Plans Spa,” June 2026, describing the 25,000-square-foot San Francisco spa with hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges and a gym. https://letsdatascience.com/news/midjourney-launches-full-body-ultrasound-scanner-plans-spa-706a2786 ↩

  17. Midjourney, “A New Era of Midjourney,” company blog post accompanying the Midjourney Medical announcement, June 2026. Quotation as published by the company. https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost ↩

  18. American College of Radiology, 2023 statement on whole-body screening in asymptomatic individuals: “To date, there is no documented evidence that total body screening is cost-efficient or effective in prolonging life,” citing the absence of standardized imaging protocols and the risks of overdiagnosis, false positives and costly follow-up, while supporting whole-body MRI for defined high-risk populations including people with Li-Fraumeni syndrome and other hereditary cancer syndromes. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. Kwee RM, Kwee TC, “Whole-body MRI for preventive health screening: A systematic review of the literature,” Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 2019 Nov;50(5):1489-1503. Pooled prevalence of critical and indeterminate incidental findings 32.1 percent; pooled false-positive proportion 16.0 percent; authors note the false-positive proportion appears substantial and verification data are lacking. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932247/ ↩ ↩2

  20. Healthspan Economy, “Best Longevity and Preventive Clinics in Sweden (2026),” recording SBU’s stated conclusion that there is no scientific support for offering general health checks to healthy people, whether by public or private healthcare, and the Cochrane evidence behind it. /insights/best-longevity-clinics-sweden ↩

  21. Eternal, seed round of $13.25 million announced January 2025 by founder Alex Mather, co-founder of The Athletic; the company paired DEXA and VO2 max testing with physician-led care and ongoing support. Fitt Insider, “Eternal Raises $13M for High-Performance Healthcare.” https://insider.fitt.co/eternal-performance-healthcare-seed-round/ ↩

  22. Fitt Insider, “Eternal Shuts Down Its High-Performance Health Platform,” and Longevity.Technology, “Eternal calls time on its longevity clinics,” July 2026. Eternal closed its San Francisco and New York clinics and informed members by email; Alex Mather wrote that the company was “not able to build a sustainable business to support our long-term vision.” The company had explored digital care and AI-powered coaching before winding down. https://insider.fitt.co/eternal-closes-its-clinics/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4