Ocado Group pumps £10m into autonomous vehicle tech startup Oxbotica

Ocado Group is to invest £10 million in Oxbotica, as part of the autonomous vehicle software venture’s Series B funding round.

The round was led by bp ventures, and also included investors in the UK,, the UK, China and Australia, such as Tencent, Halma, BGF, HostPlus, IP Group, Venture Science, and funds advised by Doxa Partners.

Ocado will take a seat on Oxbotica’s board.

The relationship between the two companies began in 2017, with a two-week trial using an early prototype delivery vehicle doing autonomous deliveries in Greenwich, London.

They are now collaborating on hardware and software interfaces for autonomous vehicles, enhancing and integrating Oxbotica’s autonomy software platform into a variety of vehicles and the Ocado Smart Platform.

Alex Harvey, Chief of Advanced Technology at Ocado, comments: “We are excited about the opportunity to work with Oxbotica to develop a wide range of autonomous solutions that truly have the potential to transform both our and our partners’ CFC and service delivery operations, while also giving all end customers the widest range of options and flexibility.”

Paul Newman, Co-Founder and CTO, Oxbotica, says: “This is an excellent opportunity for Oxbotica and Ocado to strengthen our partnership, sharing our vision for the future of autonomy.”

“By combining both companies’ cutting-edge knowledge and resources, we hope to bring our Universal Autonomy vision to life and continue to solve some of the world’s most complex autonomy challenges.”