Industrial sectors are facing labour shortages, higher costs, and safety risks from repetitive driving tasks at ports, airports, factories, and solar farms. Oxa tackles these issues with Industrial Mobility Automation (IMA), using autonomous vehicles on existing OEM hardware for towing, moving goods, and perimeter monitoring to boost efficiency without replacing entire fleets.
Oxa secured $103 million in the first part of its Series D funding, including $50 million from the UK National Wealth Fund, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), IP Group, Hostplus, and bp Ventures.
This investment supports IMA’s rollout with customers like DHL, Vantec, and bp, aiming to grow in the UK, Europe, and the Middle East.
Accelerate IMA for immediate ROI in controlled environments
Oxa was founded in 2014 in Oxford by Paul Newman and Ingmar Posner with roots in Oxbotica. The company grew out of autonomous vehicle research at Oxford University. Newman, a serial entrepreneur in self-driving tech, saw that industrial uses were moving ahead faster than consumer cars, which face more regulations.
Oxa’s mission is to accelerate IMA deployment for rapid returns in controlled settings. Their vision is to lead the global physical AI and robotics space by transforming industrial logistics with scalable, explainable autonomy on retrofit vehicles. The focus is on improving productivity and safety, not public road use.
How does it work? Oxa Driver (their self-driving brain), Oxa Foundry (the developer toolkit), and Oxa Hub (fleet management) all plug together as one stack. They connect sensors, computing, and drive-by-wire systems using Reference Autonomy Designs (RADs) on the vehicles companies already own.
Key benefits include compatibility with existing trucks and shuttles regardless of hardware, explainable AI that helps build trust with regulators, quick deployment within weeks, and a focus on industrial uses rather than consumer autonomous vehicle hype.
Unlike TuSimple and Waymo, which run on public roads using custom hardware, or Kodiak, which focuses on trucking, Oxa specialises in closed-site IMA. This offers more affordable retrofits and faster pilot projects. Oxa is more modular than Embark and better suited to non-road industrial use than Aurora.
What’s next?
The funding accelerates R&D for Oxa Driver and Foundry, expands work with customers such as DHL and bp, and supports global growth in Europe and the Middle East.
The second close of Series D is coming up in early 2026, with Oxa aiming for production rollouts that could unlock billions in productivity and create thousands of jobs. It’s a big win for the UK’s push for autonomous vehicle leadership, with Minister McDonald already calling out the freight efficiency gains.
