Ocado invests £10M in Oxford startup Oxbotica to develop range of autonomous vehicles

The Ocado Group, a leading UK-based online grocery platform and solutions provider announced the partnership with the Oxford-based startup Oxbotica to develop a range of autonomous vehicles. The company has invested $13.8 million (nearly £10 million) and bought stake in the startup that develops autonomous driving systems.

Part of Series B investment

This investment from Ocado is a part of Oxbotica’s latest Series B equity funding round. The round was led by bp ventures and included other strategic and financial investors in the US, the UK, China and Australia including Tencent, Halma, BGF, HostPlus, IP Group, Venture Science, and funds advised by Doxa Partners. As a result, Ocado will take a seat on Oxbotica’s board as well.

As part of this collaboration, Ocado will outfit a subset of its delivery vans and warehouse vehicles with data capture capabilities, which may include video cameras, LiDAR, RADAR and other sensing devices. Ocado will make this data available to Oxbotica to train and test its technologies, which will then inform Ocado as to what opportunities exist and where best it might take advantage of these exciting new partnerships.

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