Nurse

A $499 checkup gave me a peek at the future of AI-powered health care. * In today's CEO Daily: Can AI make health care better - and cheaper? * The big leadership story: Travis Kalanick's return to Silicon Valley * The markets: Surging Treasury yields spark a selloff. * Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. Good morning. Earlier this week, I got an AI-powered physical exam that frankly wowed me, from a scan that mapped my skin and body composition to heart, blood, and metabolic health tests. A physician walked me through the results a few minutes later while standing in front of my 3D image in a room more reminiscent of "2001: A Space Odyssey" than my doctor's office. Neko Health, a Swedish health care and technology company founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek and CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne, opened its first U.S. clinic in Manhattan yesterday, offering this package for $499. It was the kind of health care experience I've always wanted and rarely received: fast, simple, and proactive. "We want to create this almost magical consumer experience around health care," Nilsonne told me. "We want to democratize high-quality preventive health care and make it available to millions or hundreds of millions of people." There's a lot of discussion about health right now: the health of the planet, the health of our economies, and, of course, the health of our own bodies. We are living longer at a time when health care is getting more expensive, jobs are becoming less secure and much of the developed world is bracing for a 'silver tsunami' as aging populations impact everything from tax revenue to consumer behavior. The Trump administration announced plans this week to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public health care exchanges as part of a crackdown on fraud. The problems are profound, but I'm also struck by the promise of what's happening right now, via AI and beyond: The desire to disrupt. There are now thousands of AI-powered health care startups and plenty of disruption within the system, too. AI is saving at least 132 hours annually for half of the health care professionals surveyed in the 2026 Philips Future Health Index. They report seeing more patients and making fewer mistakes. But the most critical disruption for many Americans is cost. I spoke with Mark Cuban at the Digital Health New York Summit last week about how he's disrupting pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) with Cost Plus Drugs. Launched in early 2022, the direct-to-patient pharmacy business has expanded to manufacturing, where, Cuban says, volume has increased enough to lower the price of 190 medications. He said the company is making money, thanks in part to demand generated by TrumpRx, but that's not the goal. "My mission is just to fuck up health care," he said. "Trying to optimize a broken system doesn't really change anything." The desire to live better. Bryan Johnson might want to live forever - and this 55-year-old single mother is aging at a slower pace - but most of us just want to be healthier in the time that we're here. Is America getting healthier? When it comes to obesity and death from cancer, yes. When it comes to managing stress and the ability to afford health care, no. So it matters that companies like Walmart are trying to put more emphasis on nutrition and initiatives like its Health Ambassador pilot to make health care more accessible. Most important, though, is our growing understanding of the systemic nature of health. I spoke this week with Frederick Lowery, who became CEO of Henry Schein in March. As leader of the world's largest distributor of dental equipment, supplies, and services, he's eager to explore the links between oral health and a range of chronic ailments. The desire to engage. Large U.S. employers expect a median 9.2% increase in health care costs next year, according to the nonprofit Business Group on Health. About half expect to push those costs onto workers, a record number of whom are already disengaged. But Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel, who also oversees all of Amazon grocery, has a different approach. He came in earlier this week to talk about how the company is investing in organic foods and in workers through higher pay, apprenticeship programs, and cheap health care. There's been a lot of attention to the decision to raise the hourly pay of 100,000 workers to $21 an hour. But Buechel hopes the introduction of low-cost health care and apprenticeship programs could turn what is typically a high-turnover job into a compelling career. I suspect one reason Amazon can do that is that it's also creating AI-powered health care offerings for consumers. While health care spending is expected to hit $6 trillion this year, the opportunities to create cheaper and better solutions may grow faster. Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected] Top leadership news. Travis Kalanick's return to Silicon Valley Nearly a decade after Uber forced him out, Travis Kalanick is back with Atoms, a robotics and food-delivery startup with $1.7 billion in backing. His return comes as some investors and younger founders have embraced a more founder-driven view of Silicon Valley. Meta gets an early lead in AI glasses Meta has sold smart glasses at a growing clip, with partner EssilorLuxottica reporting 7 million pairs sold in 2025, giving the company an early lead in a race to build post-smartphone AI hardware. The glasses' appeal and Meta's advantage come with a major caveat: cameras and AI features that see and hear the world around users have sharpened privacy concerns. Why a diesel-export ban could backfire President Donald Trump has backed calls for a temporary ban on diesel exports as U.S. diesel prices hit a record $6.52 a gallon. Oil-industry analysts say the move could initially curb prices in some places but ultimately force refineries to cut output, raise gasoline and jet fuel prices, and worsen a global diesel shortage. The markets. S&P 500 futures are down 0.60% this morning. The last session closed down 0.75%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.54% in early trading. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 was down 0.06% in early trading. Japan's Nikkei 225 was up 0.76%. South Korea's markets are closed today. China's CSI 300 was down 1.73%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.29%. India's NIFTY 50 was down 1.46%. Bitcoin is down at $83k.

Neko Health body scan lands in NYC with 25K on the waitlist. Prevention gets tech budget it deserves as a $499, hour-long body scan backed by Zuckerberg and Sharapova lands in SoHo. There's a line that Neko Health likes to point to: 25,000 New Yorkers signed up before the company had even picked a paint color for its walls. It's a waitlist number for a clinic that hadn't opened yet, in a city that already has some of the best hospitals on the planet. So why the line? Because Neko is selling the hour before anything goes wrong. Strip away the marketing language and the Neko Health Scan is fairly simple to describe: one visit, about 60 minutes, no needles that draw blood in the traditional sense, no radiation. The machine and the clinician together gather a broad range of information about your heart, your skin, your blood chemistry, your metabolic markers - then you sit down with an actual person who walks you through what it means and what, if anything, you should do next [1]. That last part is the part longevity researchers have been begging for. Most of Longevity Ltd. don't get a full-body check until something already hurts. Neko is betting that people will pay to find problems before they have symptoms, and the early numbers back that bet up: more than 350,000 people worldwide have joined the waitlist or already booked a scan, and in the UK and Sweden, over 100,000 have actually gone through with it. Three out of four of those people liked what they got enough to prepay for the next one. Neko Health co-founder and CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne framed the US launch as a question the company had been sitting with for years. "We've spent the last few years asking a simple question: What if a single visit could give you a more complete picture of your health, where it's heading, and a clear plan from a medical professional to change what happens next?" he said. "New York felt like the right place to bring that idea to the US It's a city where people are used to having access to the best of everything - and we think healthcare should be no different." The SoHo location, opening 24 September at 300 Lafayette Street, isn't a converted storefront with a folding table and a blood pressure cuff. It's a two-floor buildout with seven scan rooms, built to look and feel less like a doctor's office and more like the kind of space you'd actually want to return to. That's deliberate. Preventive care only works if people show up more than once, and Neko is designing for the second visit as much as the first. None of this comes cheap to build. Neko's US push follows a $700 million Series C, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-led by OG Venture Partners. The investor list reads like a longevity dinner party: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, tennis great Maria Sharapova, Tim Ferriss, will.i.am, restaurateur Danny Meyer. When people with that much money and that much choice about where to put it all land on the same preventive health company, it says something about where the smart capital thinks health care is headed. New York is just the opening chapter. Neko plans additional NYC locations, then Miami, then Washington DC and San Francisco, all within the next year. The longevity angle nobody should skip. Here's the part that matters most for anyone thinking about healthy aging: most of the diseases that shorten its lives don't announce themselves early. Heart disease, metabolic decline, some cancers - they build quietly for years before symptoms show up, and by then, the cheapest and easiest window to intervene has often closed. A yearly, deep-dive body scan doesn't replace your doctor. But it does something longevity science has been pushing for over a decade: it moves the moment of discovery earlier, when there's still time to actually change the trajectory. That's the real product Neko is selling. Not a scan, but time.

Fastest growing Nordic startups: Neko Health and Hystar shine in 2026 ranking. Key points. * Neko Health leads the 2026 Sifted 100 ranking with a 1103.30% revenue growth. * Hystar ranks second, specializing in electrolysers for green hydrogen production. * The report highlights healthcare, AI, and cleantech as top-performing sectors. * Stockholm remains a dominant startup hub, housing 39% of ranked companies. The 2026 Sifted 100 has unveiled the fastest-growing startups in the Nordic region, with Stockholm's Neko Health taking the top spot. Founded by Daniel EK, Neko Health offers advanced diagnostic clinics and has reported an astounding 1103.30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the past two years. The company provides comprehensive health assessments that include skin scans, blood tests, and consultations with doctors, attracting a loyal member base of 100,000 individuals. CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne emphasizes the integration of wearable technology to enhance patient care, reflecting a commitment to innovative health solutions. Following Neko Health is Oslo-based Hystar, which specializes in developing electrolysers for producing green hydrogen. With a significant focus on renewable energy, Hystar's growth rate reaches 488.83%, marking it as a key player in the clean technology sector aimed at sustainable energy solutions. The success of Hystar highlights the industry's potential to contribute to a greener future through hydrogen production. In third place is Helsinki's Inven, which leverages AI to provide research tools for consultants and private equity firms, achieving a 422.51% CAGR. The leaderboard itself showcases a diverse array of sectors, illustrating the vibrancy of the Nordic startup ecosystem. From flying electric ferries to nuclear reactors, the ranking features a mix of innovative companies dedicated to disrupting traditional industries. This year's ranking sees 55 newcomers, indicating a wealth of talent and innovation emerging across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Notably, Stockholm continues to dominate as a startup hub, housing 39% of the listed companies, despite a slight decline from the previous year. Oslo follows closely with 18%, reflecting its growing entrepreneurial landscape. The report also highlights the shift in the top-performing sectors, with business-to-business companies accounting for 30% of the ranking. This marks a rise from previous years, while the fintech sector has seen a notable downturn. Additionally, twelve of the ranked startups have reported profitability, showcasing the potential for sustainable business models in the tech landscape. As the Nordic region continues to foster innovation and growth, the Sifted 100 serves as a vital resource for identifying emerging players that drive economic progress and technological advancement. The rankings not only emphasize revenue growth but also the importance of proprietary technology and sustainable practices, particularly in the case of Hystar's commitment to green hydrogen production. August 31, 2026 at 11:40 PM Stockholm, Sweden