Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

Stockholm startup Neko Health has made a big bet on consumers wanting to learn about their state of health and how to prevent things going wrong. Now, investors are making a big bet on Neko. 

The startup has raised a fresh $260 million in funding, a Series B that values Neko at $1.8 billion post-money, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.

Neko will be using the capital to break into new markets like the U.S.; continue developing its diagnostics, potentially with acquisitions; and to open more clinics in response to demand. With its waitlist now at over 100,000 people – up from 40,000 just a few months ago – Neko has scanned and evaluated 10,000 patients to date in clinics in Stockholm and its newer market of London.

“It’s very clear that there’s incredible demand for a different way of thinking about health care,” Hjalmar Nilsonne, the CEO and co-founder, said in an interview. He spoke to TechCrunch over a video link from New York, where he is working on laying the groundwork for setting up clinics in the U.S. market. 

The U.S. is a priority, he said, because right now it accounts for the most people on its waitlist outside of Europe. “Of course, we want to come to the U.S. We think there’s a lot we could contribute to the ecosystem here, made possible by this funding round,” he added.

Lightspeed Venture Partners, a new investor in the company, is leading this Series B, with General Catalyst, O.G. Venture Partners, Rosello, Lakestar and Atomico participating. The round follows a Series A of $65 million in 2023 from Lakestar, Atomico, General Catalyst and Prima Materia, the investment firm co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, who happens to be the other co-founder of Neko. Prima Materia also seeded Neko with its initial funding but is not an investor in this latest round.

The funding and Neko’s growth are coming at a time when demands are shifting in the world of healthcare. 

Around the world, whether healthcare systems are state-backed or privatized, there’s been a rising focus on preventative healthcare to spot signs before they develop into problems, including to offset the costs of handling chronic and complex conditions in populations that are living longer than before. 

Alongside that, there has been a massive injection of technology into the worlds of medicine and health: new devices, new insights, and applications powered by, for example, artificial intelligence are changing how doctors are interacting with patients, what they are able to diagnose, and what patients are looking for in a medical environment. 

Not all of these advances are evolving seamlessly — very far from it — but they show few signs of going away, and Neko is playing into all of these changes.

The Neko Health experience involves a visit to a clinic — calm, futuristic, minimalist — where, for £300, a customer gets an hour-long exam based around proprietary hardware and software. That exam generates “millions of health data points,” Neko says.

Moles and other marks on your skin are detected and counted as part of a check for skin cancer; waist circumference, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, heart rate, grip strength and other parameters are measured and used to determine whether you are at risk of metabolic syndrome, stroke, heart attack, diabetes and more. The visit includes a consultation with a doctor and recommendations for follow-ups if needed.  

Those follow-ups might come shortly after the initial visit — for example, further monitoring of blood pressure or heart activity — or it might be another full appointment the following year. Nilsonne said that currently 80% of its customers have rebooked and paid in advance for appointments in a year’s time.

Considering Neko is a company that has staked its whole ethos on the power of data and advance planning, it had a fairly random start in life. 

It was co-founded back in 2018 after Ek reached out to Nilsonne over Twitter to chat about the state of the healthcare market in response to a tweet of Nilsonne’s. Neither have backgrounds in the field – Nilsson’s previous startup was in climate tech – but through ongoing conversations, early ideas for Neko began to form. 

It took six years to bring together a team and work out Neko’s vertically-integrated approach. Even so, Nilsonne said that Neko went into the market hoping for the best but unsure if their idea would resonate; now, according to the company, demand exceeds capacity. 

Looking ahead, along with building more clinics to take in more users, Neko is focused on R&D around its medical hardware and software. 

It’s starting from a fairly low-tech baseline because of the costs until recently of building and owning medical devices. “The average ECG machine in primary care is 15 years old, meaning the software is 15 years old,” Nilsonne said. “We have a completely different model where we’re vertically integrated, meaning we make these devices, we make the software, and we have the clinic.” 

He added that Neko’s aim is to have updates on a yearly cadence, bringing in more parameters to measure, and likely different tiers of service at different price points.

“The body scan today is kind of the iPod moment for Neko,” he said. “The iPod was an iconic product that people loved, and that was exciting. But no one today is using an iPod. It enabled Apple to invest in this incredible paradigm of hand held computational devices. So we very much see this as the beginning of a journey where we’re trying to contribute, you know, incredibly affordable, high quality preventative diagnostics, and every year we’re going to be able to do more and more with less and less.”

The funding round, he said, will “allow us to double down and really increase our investments in making the product better, which is ultimately about solving some of the core problems in health care.”

It will also give Neko a chance to put more space between itself and others looking at preventative healthcare opportunities, such as Zoi in France and Aware in Germany. The capital could also set it apart from efforts from public health services, such as the Health Check provided by the NHS in the U.K., which covers many of the same areas that Neko does.

Some weeks ago, I heard from one of Neko’s early backers that some of the most insistent waitlisters were investors who wanted to check out the company first-hand for the health of their bodies and of their funds. 

It seems that getting Lightspeed off the waitlist quickly yielded a strong result. As part of this funding round, Lightspeed partner Bejul Somaia will join Neko’s board.

• Samsung has adopted the Content Credentials standard for AI-edited imagery
• The Samsung Galaxy S25 range will be the first phones in the world operating the standard
• The standard adds a tag and metadata to AI-edited images created on a Galaxy S25 device

Most of the attention at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked was obviously being devoted to the new phones – those in the Samsung Galaxy S25 range – but there was something quite important that slipped under the radar, and that’s the adoption of Content Credentials.

In 2024, the adoption of a standard for marking the creation of imagery and digital content was a hot topic, particularly due to the rise of generative AI and the plague of art theft that ensued to train large language models. Tech companies began adopting their own metadata markers and watermarks to signify AI altering, but a standard for identifying the legitimacy of an image has often been skipped.

Macbeth, William Shakespeare’s iconic play, is being reimagined as an interactive video game with a neo-noir vibe — and it’s being developed in part by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The game, titled Lili, is a “screen life thriller video game” where you’ll have access to a modern-day Lady Macbeth’s personal devices, according to a press release.

“Players will be immersed in a stylized, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life,” the release says. “The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, giving players the chance to immerse themselves in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny.” It sounds kind of like a version of Macbeth inspired by Sam Barlow’s interactive thrillers.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is making the game in collaboration with iNK Stories, a New York-based indie studio and publisher that also made 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. It stars Zar Amir as “Lady Macbeth (Lili),” per the press release.

Lili is set to release “later in 2025.”

A software engineer has bought the website “OGOpenAI.com” and redirected it to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab that’s been making waves in the open source AI world lately.

Software engineer Ananay Arora tells TechCrunch that he bought the domain name for “less than a Chipotle meal,” and that he plans to sell it for more.

The move was an apparent nod to how DeepSeek releases cutting-edge open AI models, just as OpenAI did in its early years. DeepSeek’s models can be used offline and for free by any developer with the necessary hardware, similar to older OpenAI models like Point-E and Jukebox.

DeepSeek caught the attention of AI enthusiasts last week when it released an open version of its DeepSeek-R1 model, which the company claims performs better than OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks. Outside of models such as Whisper, OpenAI rarely releases its flagship AI in an “open” format these days, drawing criticism from some in the AI industry. In fact, OpenAI’s reticence to release its most powerful models is cited in a lawsuit from Elon Musk, who claims that the startup isn’t staying true to its original nonprofit mission.

• Anthropic CEO has promised several updates to Claude, including one that gives it memory.
• This means the AI can remember things and bring it up in future conversations.
• It remains to be seen how this performs and is slated to arrive in the coming months.

The Claude AI chatbot will receive major upgrades in the months ahead, including the ability to listen and respond by voice alone. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei explained the plans to the Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, including the voice mode and an upcoming memory feature.

Essentially, Claude is about to get a personality boost, allowing it to talk back and remember who you are. The two-way voice mode promises to let users speak to Claude and hear it respond, creating a more natural, hands-free conversation. Whether this makes Claude a more accessible version of itself or will let it mimic a human on the phone is questionable, though.

Google has agreed to acquire a part of HTC’s extended reality (XR) business for $250 million, expanding its push into virtual and augmented reality hardware following the recent launch of its Android XR platform.

The deal involves transferring some of the HTC VIVE engineering staff to Google and granting non-exclusive intellectual property rights, according to the Taiwanese firm. HTC will retain rights to use and develop the technology.

The transaction marks the second major deal between the companies after Google’s $1.1 billion purchase of HTC’s smartphone unit in 2017.

Google said the acquisition will accelerate Android XR platform development across headsets and glasses. The move comes as tech giants race to establish dominance in XR technology, with Apple and Meta maintaining their lead in the virtual reality market.

Google and HTC will explore additional collaboration opportunities, they said.

• It’s an ultra-wide zoom lens designed for full-frame cameras like the Canon EOS R8
• Practically identical design to the RF 28-70mm F2.8 IS STM
• A £1,249 list price – we’ll confirm US and Australia pricing asap

Canon has unveiled its latest ultra-wide angle zoom lens for it’s full-frame mirrorless cameras, the RF 16-28mm F2.8 IS STM, and I got a proper feel for it during a hands-on session hosted by Canon ahead of its launch.

It features a bright maximum F2.8 aperture across its entire 16-28mm range, and is a much more compact and affordable option for enthusiasts than Canon’s pro RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM lens. Consider the 16-28mm a sensible match for Canon’s beginner and mid-range full-frame cameras instead, such as the EOS R8.

Scale AI is facing its ​​third lawsuit over alleged labor practices in just over a month, this time from workers claiming they suffered psychological trauma from reviewing disturbing content without adequate safeguards.

Scale, which was valued at $13.8 billion last year, relies on workers it categorizes as contractors to do tasks like rating AI model responses.

Earlier this month, a former worker sued alleging she was effectively paid below the minimum wage and misclassified as a contractor. A complaint alleging similar issues was also filed in December 2024.

This latest complaint, filed January 17 in the Northern District of California, is a class action complaint that focuses on the psychological harms allegedly suffered by six people who worked on Scale’s platform Outlier.

The plaintiffs claim they were forced to write disturbing prompts about violence and abuse — including child abuse — without proper psychological support, suffering retaliation when they sought mental health counsel. They say they were misled about the job’s nature during hiring and ended up with mental health issues like PTSD due to their work. They are seeking the creation of a medical monitoring program along with new safety standards, plus unspecified damages and attorney fees.

One of the plaintiffs, Steve McKinney, is the lead plaintiff in that separate December 2024 complaint against Scale. The same law firm, Clarkson Law Firm of Malibu, California, is representing plaintiffs in both complaints.

Clarkson Law Firm previously filed a class action suit against OpenAI and Microsoft over allegedly using stolen data — a suit that was dismissed after being criticized by a district judge for its length and content. Referencing that case, Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale AI, criticized Clarkson Law Firm and said Scale plans “to defend ourselves vigorously.”

“Clarkson Law Firm has previously — and unsuccessfully — gone after innovative tech companies with legal claims that were summarily dismissed in court. A federal court judge found that one of their previous complaints was ‘needlessly long’ and contained ‘largely irrelevant, distracting, or redundant information,’” Osborne told TechCrunch.

Osborne said that Scale complies with all laws and regulations and has “numerous safeguards in place” to protect its contributors like the ability to opt-out at any time, advanced notice of sensitive content, and access to health and wellness programs. Osborne added that Scale does not take on projects that may include child sexual abuse material. 

In response, Glenn Danas, partner at Clarkson Law Firm, told TechCrunch that Scale AI has been “forcing workers to view gruesome and violent content to train these AI models” and has failed to ensure a safe workplace.

“We must hold these big tech companies like Scale AI accountable or workers will continue to be exploited to train this unregulated technology for profit,” Danas said. 

• A new ‘Circle to Search’ trick is available on Samsung’s latest Galaxy phones
• It lets you sing or hum songs that you want to identify
• The feature worked well in our early hands-on demos

Sure, Shazam and the Google Assistant, or even Gemini, can help you identify a song that’s playing in a coffee shop or while you’re out and about. But what about that tune you have stuck in your head that you’re desperate to put a name to?

Suffice it to say, that’s not a problem I have for anything by Springsteen, but it does happen for other songs, and Samsung’s latest and greatest – the Galaxy S25, S25 Plus, and S25 Ultra – might just be able to cure this. It’s courtesy of the latest expansion of Google’s Circle to Search on devices.