Pomegra
Hamburg deeptech startup MuRay has closed €7.1M to build muon-based inspection for thick metal parts, with a first industrial service planned for 2027.
Key Takeaways
- MuRay closed €7.1M: a €3.5M private round plus €3.6M in non-dilutive public funding, including an EU Horizon Europe grant.
- First Momentum Ventures led the private round, with Caelora, a Marvel Fusion subsidiary, as co-lead. Valuation is undisclosed.
- The first industrial imaging service is due in 2027, and a full laser-driven accelerator system in 2029.
Lead
MuRay, a Hamburg startup founded in 2025, announced on October 29, 2026 that it has raised €7.1M to commercialize Active Muon Imaging. The total combines a €3.5M private round with €3.6M in public money. First Momentum Ventures led the private portion and Caelora, a wholly owned subsidiary of Marvel Fusion, co-led it. The company did not disclose a valuation.
The company images the inside of dense metal components with controlled muon beams, targeting parts that X-rays cannot penetrate. Its first targets are 3D-printed rocket engines and gas turbine components.
How Is the Round Structured?
Roughly half the money is equity and half is not. Of the €7.1M, €3.6M is non-dilutive public funding, including a grant from the EU's Horizon Europe programme, and €3.5M is private capital sold to investors.
The private round drew several investors beyond the two leads: Superangel, Mätch VC, Arcas VC and Tiny VC. Existing backer Nordic Science Investments also took part. Public grants make up a larger share of the total than usual for a company this young, which is common in physics-heavy ventures where hardware must be proven before it can be sold.
What Does the Round Say About the Previous One?
The new money is more than 20 times the size of MuRay's first raise. In November 2025 the company emerged from stealth with €325,000, led by Nordic Science Investments founders Mart Maasik and Matti Hautsalo. Angels including Toomas Bergmann and CERN-linked investor Michele Battistin joined, with support from the Estonian Business and Innovation Agency.
That earlier round funded a thesis. This one funds a plan with dates: a service in 2027 and a larger system in 2029. The jump in size, achieved within a year of founding, shows investors accepting the physics risk. It does not yet show commercial traction, since the company has named no paying industrial customer.
What Does MuRay Actually Build?
MuRay builds an imaging system that fires muons, heavy cousins of the electron, through a component and reconstructs a 3D image from what emerges. Muons travel through more than a meter of steel. X-rays stall at a few centimeters. The system combines controlled muon beams, proprietary detectors and AI software.
Co-CEO Andi Hektor said X-rays reach their limit at a few centimeters of steel, yet much of modern industry is built from metal far thicker than that. His co-CEO, Kristjan Põder, said hidden defects keep parts out of service longer than they should. Põder previously led laser-plasma accelerator work at DESY, the Hamburg particle physics center. Hektor co-founded GScan, a company that scans using naturally occurring muons.
The distinction matters. Natural cosmic-ray muons arrive slowly and at random. MuRay's controlled beams are meant to deliver usable images on industrial timescales.
How Will MuRay Reach Customers?
MuRay plans to launch its first industrial service in 2027 by pairing DESY's existing electron beam in Hamburg with its own imaging system. That route avoids building an accelerator before revenue starts. The company is also developing a mobile imaging system.
The longer-term product is a full system built around a laser-driven accelerator, scheduled for 2029. A first real-world rocket engine assessment is planned for 2027. MuRay is working with the German Space Agency (DLR) on modeling for rocket engine inspection and is in discussions with international ports about detecting nuclear material in cargo.
Who Backs It, and Why Caelora?
Caelora's involvement links MuRay to the laser industry. The company is a laser business that spun out of Marvel Fusion this year. Laser-driven acceleration depends on high-power laser hardware, so a laser-focused co-lead is a supply-side partner as much as a financial one. First Momentum Ventures brings the lead-investor role and a deeptech portfolio. Terms of the round, including each investor's share, were not disclosed.
What Are the Risks?
The main risk is schedule. A service in 2027 depends on access to DESY's beam and on the imaging system working on real industrial parts. The 2029 laser-driven machine is a larger engineering bet, because compact laser-plasma accelerators have mostly stayed in research labs.
Market adoption is the second question. Aerospace and energy buyers have established inspection routines built on X-ray and computed tomography. They will need evidence that muon scans find defects those methods miss, at a price that justifies the switch. Competing technologies and the cost per scan have not been disclosed.
Hiring and Footprint
MuRay is headquartered in Hamburg with a branch in Tallinn, where software and AI work is concentrated. It is hiring seven physicists and engineers in Hamburg and aims for about 25 staff by the end of 2027. Hamburg's proximity to aerospace and industrial manufacturers was an early reason for the base.
Outlook
MuRay has moved from a €325,000 seed to €7.1M in about a year, with half the total coming from public funding. The next checkpoints are the 2027 service launch and the first rocket engine assessment, which will show whether muon imaging delivers results X-ray cannot. The 2029 laser-driven system remains the larger test of whether the economics work outside the lab.
