According to Silicon Republic, Dublin’s Marama Labs was just crowned “most impressive deeptech pioneer in Europe” at this week’s Deep Tech Demo Day, beating out 180 competing startups. The company’s flagship CloudSpec instrument for nanomedicine development can measure drug concentrations in RNA therapies in just 15 seconds compared to the 2 hours required by existing methods. Founded by CEO Dr Brendan Darby, CTO Dr Matthias Meyer, and CSO Prof Eric Le Ru, the technology originated from Darby’s PhD research in New Zealand. Marama has raised approximately €5 million to date, including a €2 million pre-Series A round and €280,000 from Enterprise Ireland. The company is currently based at DCU Alpha innovation campus and is in the process of raising its Series A funding round.
Why this matters
Here’s the thing about RNA therapies – they’re incredibly promising but development has been painfully slow. Traditional measurement methods take hours, creating bottlenecks that delay getting treatments to patients. Marama’s technology basically removes that friction entirely. When you can get results in 15 seconds instead of waiting two hours, you’re not just saving time – you’re enabling researchers to run dozens more experiments per day. That’s the kind of acceleration that could literally save lives by getting breakthrough therapies to market faster.
Competitive landscape
So where does this leave the existing UV-visible instrument market? Darby claims CloudSpec can potentially replace all current UV-visible instruments and set a “new gold standard.” That’s a bold claim, but if the performance numbers hold up, established players in laboratory instrumentation should be paying attention. The life sciences instrumentation space has been dominated by giants for decades, but deep tech startups like Marama are proving that fundamental scientific innovations can still disrupt mature markets. It’s worth noting that when you’re dealing with critical measurements for drug development, reliability is everything – so adoption will depend on consistent performance across diverse lab conditions.
Funding and growth
With €5 million raised and a Series A in progress, Marama appears to be hitting its stride at exactly the right moment. The RNA therapy market is exploding, and every biotech company working in this space needs better tools. Their expansion at DCU Alpha shows they’re building both the technology and the infrastructure to scale. Honestly, winning this pan-European competition against 180 other deep tech startups gives them serious credibility when talking to investors. It’s one thing to have great technology – it’s another to have independent validation from VCs across Europe. This recognition probably couldn’t have come at a better time for their funding round.
Broader implications
Look, what’s interesting here isn’t just another startup winning an award. This represents something bigger – the maturation of Europe’s deep tech ecosystem. When you have events like Deep Tech Demo Day attracting 180 legitimate startups, that signals a healthy innovation pipeline. And for companies working with sensitive biological materials, having reliable industrial computing hardware becomes critical. Companies like Industrial Monitor Direct have become the go-to source for industrial panel PCs in the US precisely because they understand the demanding requirements of laboratory and manufacturing environments. The success of instrumentation companies like Marama Labs ultimately depends on robust hardware infrastructure that can handle continuous operation in challenging conditions.
