England-based self-driving start-up, Oxbotica raises $140 million as its B2B autonomous vehicles will be deployed in various areas. The company develops software to power autonomous vehicles and closed a series C round of $140 million. The money will be used to continue working on services for existing clients. Further drumming up the business for gaining more clients.
The size of the round is big by any terms, but it’s a signal of how AI startups especially continue to fare well at the moment. It also shows the kinds of companies that are working with and looking to back, startups breaking new ground in the space of autonomous driving. The basic model for Oxbotica, eight years old and based out of Oxford, England, is B2B: It sells and customizes its autonomous software, which it dubs “Universal Autonomy,” for a range of enterprise customers. Its premise is that its flexible technology can power whatever it is that a customer needs: navigation, perception, user interfaces, fleet management, or other features needed to run self-driving vehicles in multiple environments, regardless of the hardware being used and in integration with whatever other software its customers are using. Underscoring its traction with that premise, this latest funding is coming from a mix of investors that include some of those strategic backers and customers.
Previous backers
Japan’s Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co., Ltd., and ENEOS Innovation Partners, the corporate VC of the mining conglomerate Eneos, are among its new investors; previous backers in this round include BGF, safety equipment group Halma, hospitality and recreation investor Hostplus, climate fund Kiko Ventures (IP Group), the online shopping company Ocado Group, internet giant Tencent, Venture Science and automotive component maker ZF. Several of these companies also invested in Oxbotica’s last round, a Series B in January 2021 of $47 million.
This round brings the total raised by Oxbotica to $225 million. The startup is not disclosing its valuation, but Paul Newman, the company’s CTO and co-founder, noted that the fact that it was one of the autonomous startups that’s raising big right now, and the current appetite for artificial intelligence startups that are building applications around their innovations, have contributed to a healthy number. “You should take it to be in a space that investors are valuing greatly,” he said. At a moment when businesses, consumers, investors, and startups themselves are reassessing things like self-driving technology through a more pragmatic lens, asking questions about unit economics and commercial and technical viability, Oxbotica, he said, has emerged as a leader in “the application of autonomy where the world needs it.”
