€7.1m · Other round · Deeptech · Hamburg, Germany
MuRay co-founders Andi Hektor and Kristjan Põder. Image: MuRay, via Startup City Hamburg.
Hamburg-based MuRay has secured €7.1m in a private-and-public funding package to develop active muon imaging for dense industrial components and prepare a commercial inspection service for 2027. The package combines a €3.5m private round led by First Momentum Ventures and Caelora with €3.6m in non-dilutive public funding, including support from Horizon Europe. Superangel, Mätch VC, Arcas VC, Tiny VC and existing investor Nordic Science Investments also participated in the private financing.
Financing clarification: the €7.1m headline is the combined private-and-public package, not €7.1m of equity.
From laboratory beam time to an industrial inspection service
Industrial X-ray systems struggle to penetrate thick, dense parts such as 3D-printed rocket engines and gas-turbine components. MuRay says its system generates a controlled beam of muons, measures how the particles pass through an object with its own detectors, and reconstructs a three-dimensional view with software. First Momentum says the approach is designed to reveal density and material composition through more than a metre of steel, while reducing scan times from the hours or days associated with passive cosmic-ray muography to minutes.
The company is sequencing commercialisation around access to infrastructure. Its first service is planned for early 2027 at partner facilities, pairing an existing DESY electron beam in Hamburg with MuRay's converter, detectors and reconstruction software. A self-contained laser-driven system is planned for 2029. That service-first path could let MuRay start validating inspections and charging industrial customers before it has finished a portable accelerator, while concentrating early capital on the parts of the system it controls.
For aerospace, energy and advanced-manufacturing customers, the commercial value depends on more than seeing through thicker metal. Inspection data must be repeatable enough to support qualification and maintenance decisions on safety-critical parts. MuRay has modelled rocket-engine inspection with the German Space Agency at DLR and plans its first assessment of a real engine in 2027, according to First Momentum. Those milestones should test whether the physics can become a trusted production workflow rather than a specialist laboratory measurement.
MuRay grew from accelerator and particle-physics work at DESY and CERN. Co-founder Kristjan Põder led laser-plasma accelerator projects at DESY, while co-founder Andi Hektor previously worked on industrial applications of naturally occurring muons at GScan. Startup City Hamburg reports that the company, headquartered in Hamburg with a Tallinn branch, plans to grow to as many as 25 people by the end of 2027. Hiring and customer qualification will therefore run alongside the technical work: the near-term execution task is to prove useful scans with shared infrastructure before the company attempts to deliver a compact system of its own.
Sources checked:
Startup City Hamburg · First Momentum Ventures · The Next Web · MuRay · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
