MuRay raises €3.5M round for muon imaging of rocket engines
Just over half of MuRay's €7.1M comes from public funders. The Hamburg startup aims its muon beam at 3D-printed rocket engines, with a first imaging service due in 2027.
Also see more funding coverage: /funding/
Hamburg, Germany
MuRay, a Hamburg deeptech startup, announced a €3.5M round on October 29, 2026, led by First Momentum Ventures with co-lead Caelora, to build muon imaging for 3D-printed rocket engines and gas turbine parts.
Europe’s deeptech founders still raise rounds that look modest next to the hardware they want to build, and yet €7.1M in private and public money now points a muon beam, built by DESY and CERN experts, at rocket engines. Below, I lay out the round, the company, the market it sells into and what the split between public and private money tells us.
Get the Weekly brief
The week’s rounds, last calls and events, every Monday.
€7.1M in total, with €3.6M from public funders
MuRay’s total is €7.1M, made of the €3.5M private round and €3.6M of non-dilutive public funding that includes an EU Horizon Europe grant (Tech.eu and Startup City Hamburg, both Oct 29, 2026). The announcement gives no stage label, so we call it a round.
First Momentum Ventures leads the private round and Caelora, the wholly owned investment subsidiary of Marvel Fusion, co-leads. Superangel, Mätch VC, Arcas VC and Tiny VC also invested. Nordic Science Investments, which led the company’s €325K round in November 2025 (Tech.eu, Nov 4, 2025), returned as an existing investor.
By the company’s announcement, the money goes to technology development and the market launch of its imaging service. MuRay is based in Hamburg, with a branch in Tallinn and a presence at DESY, the German research center.
Muons through a meter of steel
MuRay is a spin-off from DESY and CERN experts, run by its founders and co-CEOs Dr Andi Hektor and Dr Kristjan Põder. Its startup profile on Sesamers tracks the company. The system pairs a muon beam from a laser plasma accelerator with AI to build 3D images of metal, ceramic and composite parts and to tell materials apart by composition and density.
X-ray stops at a few centimeters of steel. The company says its muon beam images through more than a meter. Remember: that figure comes from MuRay itself, and the real rocket-engine test planned for 2027 is where it meets an actual part.
The first targets are 3D-printed rocket engines and gas turbine parts, which are dense metal pieces and the territory where X-ray runs out of reach by the company’s account. The German space agency DLR modeled a rocket-engine scan.
The roadmap carries dates. In 2027, MuRay plans its first industrial imaging service, using the DESY electron beam together with its own system, and the rocket-engine test. A container-sized mobile imager follows, and a full laser plasma accelerator system is planned for 2029. The team is meant to grow to about 25 people by the end of 2027. Hardware dates have a habit of moving, so I treat these as promises to check.
A USD 22.34bn inspection market by 2030
MarketsandMarkets sizes the global non-destructive testing and inspection market at USD 14.99bn in 2025 and USD 22.34bn in 2030, an 8.3% CAGR over 2025-2030 (MarketsandMarkets release, Aug 28, 2025). The figure is global with no European split, and it covers every inspection method, so it sizes the whole field MuRay is entering and says nothing about the dense-metal niche it starts in.
In the predictive maintenance and asset monitoring vertical of our fundraising data, two rounds sit near MuRay’s size. Spector.ai raised €5.45M led by IvyCap Ventures in January 2026, and Magnefy raised a €1.35M pre-seed in August 2025. MuRay’s €3.5M falls between them. At 8.3% a year the market grows steadily, so a company at this stage depends on its first customers in the niche for growth.
Public funders carry just over half of the round
The reality is that €3.6M of the €7.1M, just over half, comes from public funders. Is that a weakness, or how we build deeptech in Europe? The good news is that the public programs and research centers are doing their part, since Horizon Europe funds the company, DESY and CERN expertise built the technology, and two investors co-led the private part.
What to watch is whether the 2027 imaging service signs its first paying customers, because paying customers are the next proof point after the grants.
The opportunity is clear. In 2027 we find out whether a muon beam can look through a meter of steel, and I will be watching the rocket-engine test closely. Let’s follow it together!
