Living longer is the new luxury. Once confined to biotech labs and the disposable income of Silicon Valley billionaires, longevity is no longer a tech bro hobby and has become a consumer aspiration in its own right. Preventative full-body MRI scans, AI-powered health dashboards and wearable biometric trackers are rapidly moving from niche health tools to status symbols, particularly among affluent consumers and celebrity ambassadors.
The CEOs of many of the leading players in the space say their fastest-growing consumer categories are Gen Z and post-menopausal women. For the ultra-rich, healthspan — the proportion of one’s life spent living in good health — has become one of the few remaining assets that money can meaningfully improve.
“All the indicators in our research suggest that this is not a passing fad, but a trend that’s been around for the last 10-15 years and is now accelerating much faster,” says Anna Pione, a partner at McKinsey’s consumer practice, focused on luxury wellness investment. Consumers are being more proactive than ever and taking their health into their own hands. McKinsey’s research shows this trend is accelerating thanks to the convergence of a few recent breakthroughs: GLP-1s, the creation of companies that make testing and tracking much more accessible to consumers, and generative AI, where consumers now have a much easier way to research and distill information about their health at their fingertips.
Oura introduced a GLP-1 Insights feature to its software in May, that enables ring wearers to log their dose, side-effects, and weight changes.
Photo: Courtesy of Oura
At the same time, consumer research shows there’s growing enthusiasm — especially among Gen Z — for affiliating with wellness and longevity-oriented brands. A recent study of 3,021 hospital patients in the US found that Gen Zs were also most likely to own a wearable device (71%), over millennials (69%) and Gen Xs (65%). “Each generation seems to be prioritizing it more than the last, which is another strong signal that this trend will continue,” Pione says. “We’re also seeing that longevity is much more core to Gen Z’s identity. Consumers are taking pride in being seen as someone who is taking care of their health.”
If the first wave of longevity tech was about measuring the body, the next will be about interpreting it. Consumers are increasingly seeking a holistic, continuous understanding of their health, and practical guidance on how to improve it. As AI makes those insights more personalized, experts say the winners will be those that can pair intelligent software with robust clinical evidence. For luxury, that signals a shift away from products alone and toward long-term relationships built on trusted health services and personalized information.
In little more than a decade, longevity tech has evolved from a niche corner of biotech, backed largely by high-net-worth individuals, family offices and angel investors, into one of venture capital’s most closely watched sectors. Investment has grown from around $500 million in 2016 to a projected $8-9 billion in 2026, according to Dealroom data. Over that period, the industry has progressed from laboratory validation and academic research into a capital-intensive market powered by artificial intelligence, large-scale clinical trials and increasingly sophisticated consumer platforms that are becoming well-known brands.
A large part of this investment has been concentrated among a handful of category leaders. Wearable health companies Oura and Whoop, alongside preventative health scanning company Neko Health, have all reached multibillion-dollar valuations in the last 12 months, valued at $11 billion, $10.1 billion and $7 billion respectively. Analysts expect the sector’s growth to accelerate further as these businesses mature and new entrants emerge, with venture investment projected to reach $20-25 billion annually by 2030. More broadly, UBS estimates the wider longevity economy could be worth $8 trillion by the end of the decade.
The capital flowing into longevity reflects a much broader cultural shift, sparked by our collective realisation we’re going to live longer than previous generations. “Because of life expectancy trends today, individuals now have a much stronger incentive to be concerned about how they age,” says Professor Andrew J Scott, an economist and author of The Longevity Imperative and The 100-Year Life. “Then from a company perspective, as more of the population gets older, they tend to have more money, which means the commercial opportunity keeps getting bigger too,” he adds.
Scott has coined the term “evergreen economy” to refer to the growing consumer market for technology that supports “active, healthy and engaged” aging — a marked departure from the “silver economy” conversation, which has historically assumed a gradual decline in health. Where just 3% of the global health system is currently focused on preventative care, investors, analysts and economists all tell Vogue Business they expect healthspan gains in the next few years to come from preventative healthcare breakthroughs in the private sector. This will be funded by compounding consumer demand combined with more institutional capital.
“As we shift from a health system focused on treating disease to a world where we have to maintain health, a lot more responsibility will fall on the individual,” says Scott. “That means we have to find ways to improve our chances of remaining healthy, engaged and productive for as long as possible … It’s recognizing that we need to make a friend of our future selves.” So which companies are defining the next phase of longevity tech, and what are they building next?
Constant tracking vs. one-off scans
The biggest names in the consumer longevity tech market are split into two sub-sectors: constant health tracking wearables like Oura and Whoop, versus one-off, annual whole-body preventative health scans including Neko, Prenuvo and Ezra.
Oura
Health-tracking smart ring company Oura is now the most valuable consumer longevity tech company, after reaching a $11 billion valuation in October 2025 at its $900 million Series E funding round. In May, it confidentially filed for an IPO.
Founded: 2013
Valuation: $11 billion
Total VC capital raised: ~ 1.6 billion
Paid members: ~ 5 million paid members
Hardware product: In May, Oura released its hotly anticipated “Oura Ring 5”, a 40% smaller and lighter version of its previous smart ring, the Oura Ring 4, that incorporates a lighter titanium construction, redesigned sensors, improved sensor accuracy so that wearers can wear the ring on different fingers, 6-9 day battery life and a portable charging case.
The Oura Ring 5 is now small enough to blend in with the wearer’s standard ring collection — where previous versions of the smart ring were evidently wearable tech. Chief design officer Miklu Silvanto recently told Vogue Business that the company will be “even bolder” with its materials and color choices in future, and that the goal, as with all consumer tech products, is to design “smaller objects [that are] able to do more and more jobs.”
Oura’s Oura ring 5 was released in May, a 40% smaller and lighter version of its predecessor.
Photo: Courtesy of Oura
Software product: In the last nine months since its funding round, Oura has increasingly shifted its focus from hardware to software. After rolling out its Oura Advisor, an in-app AI chat feature that allows members to ask questions about their health data and receive explanations based on the biometric information collected by the ring, the company expanded the tool in February with a dedicated women’s health model, designed to interpret ring data through the lens of menstrual cycles, pregnancy and menopause. These updates are designed to help female ring wearers understand how hormonal changes influence metrics such as sleep, body temperature, stress and recovery, and answer related health questions using clinically informed guidance.
Then, alongside the launch of Oura Ring 5 in June 2026, Oura introduced a suite of software features that further blurred the line between consumer wellness and preventative healthcare. Its new Health Radar flags meaningful changes across long-term health metrics, while Blood Pressure Signals and Nighttime Breathing monitor patterns associated with cardiovascular and respiratory health. Users can also upload blood test results into the app to view biomarkers alongside wearable data, while US members can now connect their electronic health records, which enables the Oura Advisor to incorporate information such as diagnoses, medications, allergies and laboratory results into its responses. All this is dependent on the wearer’s willingness to share this data, of course.
The CEO take: “As the longevity technology and wearables space becomes more crowded, we believe the differentiator won’t be the hardware specs or product iterations, but the depth of the software and AI ecosystem that makes the data actionable for your customers,” says Oura CEO Tom Hale. “The biggest opportunity over the next decade is richer personalized guidance, stronger proactive health capabilities, and deeper links between everyday signals and clinical context.”
“The future is about your data actually being useful instead of just being collected. Most health tracking today is built around generic goals: hit 10,000 steps, get eight hours of sleep. The real opportunity is understanding what’s actually true for your own body, connecting that understanding to behavior, and when it matters, connecting it to actual care — whether it’s prevention, acute care, urgent care, or chronic care,” Hale says.
“The harder problem isn’t collecting more data, it’s making sense of it. That’s why we built a clinical AI that learns the context of your own health history and can translate your data into clinical terms. We started that in women’s health and expanded it to general use, and if something warrants it, you can escalate from that conversation to an actual doctor.”
Whoop
Health-tracking wearable company Whoop reached a $10.1 billion valuation in March 2026 following its $575 million Series G funding round. The company, which has more than 2.5 million members, plans to use the funding to expand globally and further integrate AI into its health and wellness monitoring tools. It also plans to boost its headcount by around 75% this year to get there. Whoop is eyeing an IPO in around 18 months.
Founded: 2012
Valuation: $10.1 billion
Total VC capital raised: ~ $979 million
Paid members: 3 million+ global members
Hardware product: Since launching Whoop 5.0 and the premium Whoop MG device in May 2025, the company has continued to expand beyond the wristband itself. The new hardware introduced a smaller device with longer battery life and, in the MG model, medical-grade heart screening features including ECG functionality and irregular heart rhythm notifications. More strategically, however, Whoop is pushing into wearable apparel. Following the 2021 launch of its Any-Wear clothing system, which allows the sensor to be worn in garments rather than only on the wrist, the company unveiled Project Terrain with designer Samuel Ross in March 2026, its first fashion collaboration and a move that signaled Whoop’s ambition to incorporate the sensor “invisibly” into everyday dress.
Software product: Like Oura, Whoop has been investing heavily in building out its software offering in the last 12 months. Over the past year, Whoop has introduced Healthspan, which estimates users’ physiological age and pace of aging using longitudinal (i.e., the same data points constantly collected over time to track physiological changes in real-time) biometric data; Whoop Advanced Labs, integrating clinician-reviewed blood test results with the Whoop band’s wearable insights; Blood Pressure Insights; improved Sleep Performance and Strength Trainer features; and it has expanded Whoop Coach, its in-app AI-powered coaching assistant, to deliver increasingly personalized health recommendations. The company has also rolled out women’s hormonal insights, more in-depth journaling tools and voice-powered health logging. This all points to Whoop’s broader strategy to evolve from a fitness tracker into an AI-driven preventative health platform that combines wearable, laboratory and behavioral data.
Q&A: Will Ahmed, CEO of Whoop
You recently hired long-time Nike marketing leader Dirk-Jan “DJ” van Hameren as chief marketing officer and former Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy as chief commercial officer. What’s behind those big fashion and beauty hires?
DJ van Hameren really stood out to me as someone who, for three-plus decades, has told amazing stories. He was the global chief marketing officer at Nike during a timeframe when the company was at its peak, and I’ve always admired Nike as a brand. I think they’re very aspirational. They often do a good job taking athletes and telling a bigger story, so there are some parallels to Nike’s history and what we’re trying to achieve at Whoop.
Kyle is a former CEO who really knows how to build teams and build strategy across all our commercial strands and go to market. She also appreciates brand building from her past at Glossier. Another goal for Whoop is to grow with women, and so she’s coming from a brand that is very focused on women, which I think is healthy for us as a company.
Are you building a health company at Whoop, or are you building the Nike or Glossier of the longevity era?
It’s funny that what’s implied in that question is that a health company can’t be a brand. Whoop is trying to build the first brand for personal health. If you ask yourself what big public company owns personal health, there are a lot of companies that touch personal health, but the brand for personal health, that to me feels like it’s still up for the taking.
Will Ahmed, Whoop CEO.
Photo: Courtesy of Whoop
How does that aspirational branding fit with healthcare credibility?
I think ultimately the technology we’re building will either make people healthier or one day save their life. As an umbrella, that feels like huge capabilities for personal health. Some of our work will intersect very directly with the healthcare sector or will interact very directly with your doctor’s office. Some of our work will happen just under the umbrella that is Whoop. We now have members who have 24/7 Whoop data. They have their medical records uploaded to Whoop, all of their advanced labs and blood tests are running through Whoop, and they’re talking to Whoop’s AI every day and sharing more information about themselves. As a starting point, that’s a lot of health data. Couple that with the advancement of AI and all of a sudden you’ve got hugely insightful feedback to go with your personal health.
The subtlety is that we’re also making health monitoring aspirational, which historically, as a category, if we think of traditional monitoring via medical devices, has been stigmatized. Which is to say that if you’re wearing a medical device, people will say, “What’s wrong with you?” And that’s obviously not what you want to communicate. As a brand, you want people to be like, “Oh, you’re wearing a medical device and it’s because you care about your health, and you’re an aspirational person.
Whoop’s health tracking band.
Photo: Courtesy of Whoop
Would you say longevity is now a status symbol, especially among Gen Z?
I do think longevity has become a new status symbol. It’s not necessarily how wealthy someone is, or how successful they are in their career, but it’s also: how good do they look at their age, and how healthy are they? Are they able to exercise? So I think there’s a real shift in the cultural zeitgeist, and of course that’s benefiting Whoop. We’re becoming a bigger brand at the same time that people have a real interest in personal health.
What are Whoop members engaging with most that can give us an indication of where the longevity space is headed?
There’s a real fascination with our healthspan feature, which is the score that gives you a Whoop age, essentially telling you whether you’re older or younger based on your physiology and your behavior versus your chronological age. It’s become the most screenshotted page in the Whoop app. I think it goes back to the fact people want to feel younger than they are.
[With AI], there’s this feeling that you can bypass a broken system. You can get another set of recommendations, a second opinion, so to speak, on your health. And what ties to that is this feeling like, OK, I can take more control of my health. So again, I think we’re in the right place at the right time because we’re collecting all of this very important physiological information and also now providing AI tools to help people really understand what it all means.I think longevity and health will be one of the most unambiguously positive use cases of AI. People are talking to Whoop every day about their health data, how they’re sleeping and recovering and exercising and what supplements they take, what supplements they should take, asking why they’re feeling sick. They’re learning a lot about themselves, and in some cases that’s causing them to drive a behavior change, like quitting drinking alcohol because they saw what it was doing to their body, or starting to go to bed earlier, or they stopped eating so close to bed. All of that is unambiguously good.
The health tracking dashboard within Whoop’s smartphone app.
Photo: Courtesy of Whoop
Whoop’s fastest-growing consumer segments are members aged under 20 (your youngest members are 14) and women aged 60+. Why are these groups flocking to the product?
I think the younger generation is tech-savvy and essentially realizes it’s an inevitability that they’re going to use AI to understand their health and they need data. Then I also think that this younger generation is dealing with mental health pressures that benefit from additional insight, like monitoring sleep and stress. For the much older generation, a lot of our medical capabilities, like ECG monitoring, are really resonating. ECG monitoring, Atrial fibrillation (AFib) detection, and the ability to upload your blood tests, which we just came out with.
Neko
Swedish preventative health scanning company Neko Health is at an earlier stage of maturity than Oura and Whoop, but is growing very fast, having delivered six times more scans in 2025 than in 2024. Neko reached a nearly $7 billion valuation in July 2026 following its $700 million Series C funding round. It’s raised just over $1 billion in venture capital since 2023, with the latest funding earmarked for an aggressive US expansion, further investment in AI and clinical research, and the rollout of new diagnostic capabilities. Its AI-powered one-hour health scan costs €300, positioning it at the lower end of the market. Neko has not yet announced IPO plans.
Neko’s clinic in Manchester, which opened in September 2025, the fourth of six locations in the UK.
Photo: Courtesy of Neko
Founded: 2018
Valuation: ~ 7 billion
Total VC capital raised: ~ 1 billion
Waitlist: 350,000+
Consumers scanned: 100,000
Hardware product: Since opening its first UK clinic last year, Neko has been expanding both its technology and consumer platform. The company’s biggest product update came in June 2026, when it introduced body composition analysis to each health scan, allowing clinicians to measure visceral fat and body fat percentage alongside existing cardiovascular, blood and skin assessments.
Following its Series C funding round in July, Neko also unveiled a new generation of its proprietary scanning hardware, with upgraded “Derma-2”, “Echo-2” and “Spectrum-2” devices designed to capture a greater volume and higher-fidelity data across the skin, heart and circulation, with increased automation, to be rolled out across all clinics in the coming months.
Software product: Also in June 2026, Neko launched the Neko Health app, which integrates Apple Health data captured from wearables like Oura, Whoop and the Apple Watch, so that clinicians can review consumers’ wearable metrics — including sleep, activity and recovery — alongside their scan results at their clinical assessment. It was the company’s first move toward combining longitudinal lifestyle data with its clinical assessments.
CEO take: Neko’s CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne recently told Vogue Business that the company’s ambition is to become the “affordable luxury” of longevity, bringing the costs of its scans down while evolving beyond a one-off health check appointment into a preventative health platform that combines its proprietary hardware with software and constant health monitoring.
“I think the next five years are really going to be about: OK, we have all these consumers taking control of their health, how is that going to start to interface with the healthcare system? I see our job at Neko as starting to build the connective tissue for consumers who care the most about their health to get the most out of the entire system,” Nilsonne said.
Prenuvo
Full-body MRI preventative health scan company Prenuvo raised a $120 million Series B round in 2025, bringing its total venture funding to nearly $192 million. Last November, Prenuvo expanded into the UK with the opening of its first European clinic in London’s Fitzrovia, following rapid growth across North America and Australia. High-profile celebrity endorsements from the likes of Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cindy Crawford have helped propel the company into the cultural mainstream, but its positioning is more clinical than that of Neko’s. Today, at £2,499 for a scan, it sits at the higher end of the market, but Prenuvo’s strategy is predicated on making it a mainstream preventative healthcare service over time.
Founded: 2018
Valuation: Undisclosed
Total VC capital raised: ~ 190 million
Waitlist: “Tens of thousands,” according to the company
Consumers scanned: 170,000+
Hardware product: Prenuvo has gradually expanded its platform beyond just a whole-body MRI to combine imaging with multi-modal diagnostics. In February 2025, the company launched Prenuvo Enhanced, combining its core scan with three new services: an AI-powered body composition analysis, which measures visceral fat, muscle volume and other biomarkers from MRI images; a new brain health assessment designed to identify early indicators of neurological disease; and a blood biomarker panel covering metabolic, cardiovascular, hormonal and immune health.
Prenuvo’s full body MRI scan.
Photo: Courtesy of Prenuvo
Software product: Although Prenuvo has offered a patient app for several years, its role has expanded significantly alongside a new three-tier annual membership model that launched in March 2026. Rather than functioning simply as a repository for MRI images and reports, it’s increasingly designed to help members track changes in their health over time, bringing together imaging, blood biomarkers, clinical recommendations and follow-up care into a longitudinal health record. Members now receive repeat blood tests after six months, annual imaging, consultations with clinicians and access to a digital platform that tracks changes over time. Its three annual subscription memberships range from $1,199 for the core membership to between $3,999 and $4,499 for its executive membership, which includes all the new diagnostics mentioned above.
CEO take: Like Neko, Prenuvo is shifting its focus from one-off diagnostics into continuous health management, via the new membership model, which CEO Andrew Lacy tells Vogue Business was driven by consumer demand for more frequent touchpoints with Prenuvo’s medical staff.
“A big focus for us is how do we really help people understand not just what their health looks like at a point in time, but really how the trajectory of their health is evolving as they age,” Lacy says. “My body has aged one year from last year to this year, but how? Where have I managed to stop time? And is my body aging perhaps faster than I would like it to? So we’re focusing on how we can bring together all these different modalities to consumers in a way that helps them cohesively understand the story of their health.”
Currently, Prenuvo’s scan price is high because of the depth of data it provides, Lacy says. “The biggest challenge in longevity tech isn’t bringing all these data sources together, but the paucity of information that we have. The real challenge is depth of information,” he adds.
Ezra (part of Function Health)
Whole-body MRI company Ezra became one of the first significant consolidation stories in the longevity tech sector when it was acquired by preventative health platform Function Health in May 2025, for an undisclosed sum. Founded in New York in 2018, Ezra had raised around $44 million in venture funding before the acquisition and now operates across the US and UK through a network of partner imaging centers, rather than company-owned clinics like competitors Neko and Prenuvo. The deal combined Ezra’s imaging capabilities with Function Health’s blood testing platform and led to the launch of a new $499 full-body MRI scan, down from Ezra’s previous starting price of around $1,500.
Founded: 2018
Valuation: Undisclosed
Total VC capital raised: ~ $44 million, before acquisition
Waitlist: Undisclosed
Consumers scanned: Undisclosed
Hardware product: The most significant change came alongside the acquisition in May 2025, when Ezra combined its AI-powered MRI technology with Function’s blood testing platform. Alongside the acquisition, the company launched a new 22-minute full-body MRI scan, down from around 60 minutes previously, using its AI software to accelerate image acquisition. The shorter scan saw Function reduce the starting price of a full-body scan from around $1,500 to $499. At the same time, the companies integrated imaging with Function’s biomarker testing platform, allowing members to access laboratory testing and MRI through a single preventative health membership, rather than as standalone products.
Ezra uses AI to sharpen and accelerate image making during its MRI scans.
Photo: Courtesy of Ezra
Software product: Following the acquisition, Function Health — not Ezra — is becoming the consumer-facing software platform. Function Health has made its mobile app the central interface for members, where they can view MRI scans and radiology reports alongside more than 160 blood biomarkers, integrate Apple Health and wearable data, and use an AI chatbot to interpret results and answer health-related questions. It’s also built an applied research lab inside Function, its “Medical Intelligence Lab”, partnering with academic medicine and running its own trials to learn from the data collected across its MRIs and lab tests, in the hopes of building predictive models in future.
CEO take: Ezra’s integration into the Function Health app is another example of the move toward providing a longitudinal health platform that consolidates multiple sources of health data into a single app, rather than offering standalone tests or scans. For CEO Emi Gal, it’s all a move toward interpreting all the data it’s collecting to provide more proactive healthcare.
“Scanners and wearables keep getting cheaper and better, the apps keep getting slicker and there are more of them every month. All fine, but none of that is where this is won,” he says. “The next few years are about one thing: prediction. Not “here’s your data,” but “here’s what’s likely to happen to you, and here’s the window to change it.” The device that takes the measurement becomes a commodity; the intelligence that tells you what it means, and what’s coming, is the whole game.”
“That’s the reason we’ve built our applied research lab inside Function, the Medical Intelligence Lab. Its job isn’t a nicer gadget, it’s to learn from what MRIs and lab tests show while someone is still well, so we can see disease coming when it’s early enough to actually do something. That’s why we’re partnering with academic medicine and running our own trials: you can’t predict responsibly without proving the predictions hold up. Prediction only gets good when it learns from millions of people, so the incentive runs toward scale, not scarcity.”
Your personal health operating system
A decade into the sector’s existence, all these companies are converging around the same strategy: evolving from standalone products into platforms that sit at the center of consumers’ health — or a “personal health operating system”.
While all these companies continue to refine their sensors and scanning technologies, the real race is increasingly to own the consumer relationship through AI, longitudinal health records and subscription-led personalized health platforms that learn more about you the more data you share and interact. In other words, the goal is no longer simply to measure health, but to become the platform through which consumers understand, monitor, manage and, eventually, intervene with their health over time.
“The companies operating in this space have always recognized that the huge opportunity lies in offering a comprehensive self-care ecosystem for consumers that serves all the interconnected needs across the wellness Venn diagram,” says Pione, who points to how each data point affects the next, from mental state, to stress, to sleep, to diet. “There’s a lot of value to consumers in something that can help them much more comprehensively across all of these dimensions and really guide them along in that journey, so we’ve seen the evolution in wearables from collecting data to insights that help synthesize what’s going on with our health, and now we’re starting to get into the phase that’s all about what we should actually go and do about it.” According to Pione, hardware is becoming less of a differentiator than the software layer built on top of it, with long-term value shifting toward the insights and recommendations of what actions to take that these companies can generate from consumers’ data.
While Whoop and Oura are starting with continuous wearable data and progressively enriching their health insights offering with AI chatbots, blood tests and other forms of medical data collection, Prenuvo and Ezra are starting with the deepest possible clinical data and layering software on top. Neko sits firmly in the middle, but was the first of the scanners to integrate wearables data into its longitudinal health-tracking app. As AI drives down the cost of synthesizing health data and the underlying hardware becomes increasingly commoditized, analysts expect value to migrate away from the devices themselves and toward the intelligence layered on top of them. In that future, the premium product is not the scan or the wearable, but the personalized guidance it enables.
For all the consumer enthusiasm, analysts say the industry’s next challenge is proving that these technologies deliver meaningful health outcomes. As clinical evidence around sleep, preventative imaging and other interventions accumulates, it could make the sector increasingly attractive to insurers and other institutional players that require robust evidence before funding care.
“I think that who will “win” will be the company that can demonstrate outcomes in a credible way, because the moment that happens, the institutional space will get fully involved, and consumers will get that meaningful evidence that they’re craving,” says Lars Hartenstein, partner and director of healthy longevity at the McKinsey Health Institute. As consumer behavior shifts more toward active prevention, Hartenstein says this means the market for private companies that provide ongoing healthcare for otherwise “well” consumers will continue to expand. “Our engagement with the healthcare system is actually not so big until pretty late in life, so therefore engagement points come from other spaces,” he says. “If we believe that healthy living is influencing our long-term health, it’s actually quite natural that not much of our engagement with our health would happen within the health system [which is focused on reactive care].”
Information as a luxury
Where the full-body health scans at the top end of the market currently sit at a luxury price point, Prenuvo, Neko and Ezra all say that in the next five to ten years, they intend to lower the price point to make their scans more accessible.
“Proactive healthcare is absolutely going to become mainstream,” Prenuvo’s Lacy says. “As all of the players scale up and as we are able to use AI more productively, we’ll bring the cost out of the business down and that will translate into lower prices for consumers,” he adds. Lacy says he hopes that in 10 years, there will be “as many Prenuvos out there as Starbucks”, in what he imagines as automated booths where consumers can walk in, lie down for five minutes, and leave the facility with their report in hand, doing so once or twice a year, at a cost of around $300. All this is in service of diagnosing every disease at a very early stage where medical interventions are easier, or when even a lifestyle intervention could nip the problem in the bud, he says. “I also think we’ll see health systems increasingly looking to cover these scans in the five to 10-year timeframe,” Lacy adds.
While this may sound a much less “luxury” proposition, Ezra’s Gal argues that as the preventative healthcare trend grows, “the luxury won’t be whoever builds the most exclusive machine or the most beautiful clinic, which is the easy part to copy, but whoever can look at your biology and tell you something true about your future.” The implication for luxury is that value shifts away from beautifully designed hardware and exclusive clinics toward something far less tangible: proprietary insight. In the future longevity economy, the ultimate premium product most likely won’t be a device, but the ability to understand (and potentially alter) the trajectory of your future health.
Where luxury hospitality and beauty groups are already beginning to invest in personalized longevity offerings, Pione believes the collaboration opportunity will increasingly extend to the more medical health insights that these longevity tech players provide. Rather than selling health directly, she expects luxury companies will increasingly participate in longevity insights through layering personalized products on top, as well as members-only experiences. These could take the form of partnerships spanning beauty, hospitality, fitness, diagnostics and wearables.
Falling prices are unlikely to diminish the luxury opportunity. As Hartenstein points out, every wave of innovation creates a new premium tier, with early adoption led by what McKinsey terms “Maximalist Optimizers” and “Confident Enthusiasts” — that’s high-net-worth consumers who view experimenting with new health technologies as part of their lifestyle.
“Fundamentally, there is scientific innovation happening, which means there will always be a new frontier that is more expensive and upmarket,” Hartenstein says. “We should expect it’s going to be an active research program and innovation program for quite a while, which means there are always going to be new things to try and places to spend.”
