Exposed: Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s top secret healthtech startup

Spotify founder Daniel Ek is no stranger to working in stealth. In the early times of his business-modifying audio enterprise, the crew drove buzz by denying beta accessibility to media.

Now he’s associated in a different challenge wrapped in similar secrecy: a healthtech startup. The venture, referred to as HJN Sverige, also involves Hjalmar Nilsonne, the founder of the exited Swedish vitality startup Watty.

It is not a shocking move — in 2013, Daniel Ek spoke openly about his passion for healthcare when he explained to the Financial Periods of the several hours he used thinking about how to take care of a “screwed-up” healthcare program.

According to organization paperwork and a promptly taken-down world-wide-web page, the firm appears to be most likely to roll out a programme of non-invasive diagnostics. That would be a reaction to calls from medical professionals and policymakers for more preventative drugs to maintain people today healthier and decreased upcoming healthcare charges.

Because late 2018, Ek has invested about €6m in the new startup but has not publicly spoken about its existence. HJN Sverige declined to remark for this article.

Centered on files and a vacation to the startup’s initially bodily location, Sifted has pieced alongside one another a photograph of Ek’s vision for the long term of health care.

Enter Atrium

On a silent road on Kungsholmen in central Stockholm, opposite the workplaces of the design business Skanska, it’s doable to visit the startup’s first physical location: a main treatment facility that opened last thirty day period. It’s known as Atrium — Latin for “entry hall” and a title for one of the chambers of the heart.

When Sifted entered the refurbished clinic last week, there were no signs of other people but a blend of a couple of new pieces of household furniture, some unpacked bins pushed from the wall and a few of carpenters operating absent.

It is most likely the only most important care clinic in Stockholm where by you can get an appointment the up coming working day — the internet site is presently having bookings.

Other than running this not too long ago opened clinic, what just do HJN Sverige and the sister enterprise HJN Proaktiv Hälsovård [Proactive Healthcare] do?

Modern legal documents filed with the Swedish enterprise registry point out that the company will sell “products and products and services in diagnostics as perfectly as conducting examinations and health and fitness checks on the non-public market”, suggesting the firm will have both equally B2B and B2C arms.

The startup’s site, which Sifted consulted very last week, implies that on the purchaser side — with its clinic — it would like to provide clients an advanced well being look at that can be element of frequent preventative treatment, as nicely as day-to-working day health care providers with some expert services out there on the internet.

Scientific study programmes

On the B2B facet, the startup is looking to sell equipment understanding and diagnostics applications to other healthcare vendors, as nicely as components. But it is acquired to examination its technology and enter info for the equipment understanding to do the job — and for that the business requirements men and women.

According to web-site info that has since been deleted, it will start a assortment of non-invasive scientific investigate collaborations, starting off with a programme on whole-system scanning this thirty day period — and is seeking for people today, and not only its possess patients, to volunteer. At the starting of upcoming yr, the enterprise will start out research programmes for innovative skin imaging, nutritious hearts and preventative treatment.

Sifted accessed the information about these programmes on the web-site prior to reaching out to the enterprise. The next day those world wide web web pages experienced been taken down.

Two different individuals with immediate understanding of the business tell Sifted that it is setting up a gadget related to an airport protection scanner — resources suggested it was arc-shaped — creating it achievable to non-invasively scan for blood tension, irregularities in blood circulation and skin conditions and offer precise health care diagnostics.

Diagnostics on the rise

Diving deeper into paperwork for HJN Sverige at the Swedish Corporations Registration Place of work, Sifted finds that some of Ek’s shares have been allocated to his expenditure company Prima Materia, through which Ek strategies to commit €1bn in “moonshots”. Ek has also invested in the organization from his private expense firm ​​Antheia Investments. Ek owns approximately 60% of the shares and Nilsonne has been allotted 38%. A tiny proportion of shares are owned by the United kingdom startup Spectroma, which is dependent in Oxfordshire.

Spectroma, started in 2020, describes alone as a deeptech organization constructing an state-of-the-art clinical imaging machine utilizing radiofrequency imaging. For this layman, it appears like a good healthy for what Ek and Nilsonne are striving to accomplish. Sifted attained out to Spectroma for remark.

Startups in the preventative treatment sector have mostly been centered on building modest units or software program. For personalized use there are bits of tech like the Oura ring, numerous smart headbands to use although sleeping, sensible wristbands, property testing, blood assessments and the like. When it comes to program for preventative medication, most are centered on tools that accompany other healthcare tools like Idoven’s heart disease prediction AI.

But there is space for much more. In accordance to Dealroom, VCs have place virtually $18bn into European biotech startups given that the get started of 2020, roughly the exact sum that they invested in the 6 yrs prior. The pandemic opened VC eyes to the options of healthtech, and has revealed no symptoms of slowing down because.

So what’s upcoming for the corporation?

Just one of Sifted’s resources suggests that Ek has handpicked people to operate at the startup. Documents present that personnel involve a former Spotify worker who has taken the part of CTO and a previous staff of eye-monitoring organization Tobii who is now VP of components R&D. The startup has also managed to headhunt health care workers who generally present commentary on Swedish tv, in accordance to LinkedIn.

It’s not Ek’s only healthtech wager in Sweden — the entrepreneur has also invested in Swedish healthtech startups like the blood testing organization Werlabs and the electronic well being provider Kry, which he owns 3% of.

A spokesperson at HJN did say that Atrium is not what it will be called in the stop. And whatever Sifted has found, “it is just a tiny piece of the puzzle of what is to come”.

An intriguing piece all the identical.

Mimi Billing is Sifted’s Nordic correspondent. She also handles healthtech, and tweets from @MimiBilling