RoboCap Advisor Paul Newman’s Oxbotica Raises $47m in Funding Led by BP

Oxbotica, a global leader in autonomous vehicle software, has announced the completion of a $47 million Series B investment with partners across the globe led by bp Ventures. Oxbotica was co-founded in 2014 by its Chief Technology Officer Paul Newman who is also a trusted member of the RoboCap Advisory board. This board helps RoboCap to understand key technologies which are important as well as the latest industry trends, this is expert information which we utilise to help make investment decisions. The proceeds of the funding will be used to accelerate the commercial deployment of its world-class autonomy software platform across multiple industries and key markets. The news is an endorsement of Oxbotica’s go-to-market strategy which involves deploying its autonomy software in industrial use cases before rolling out in urban passenger transportation applications. The funding involved some very high calibre and well-known investors including BGF, bp Ventures, Halma, HostPlus, IP Group, Tencent, Venture Science, and funds advised by Doxa Partners. Since 2014, Oxbotica has grown from a UK robotics start-up to one of the world’s leading autonomy companies. Oxbotica designs and implements software platforms which have the aim of providing Universal Autonomy. They have two main platforms – the first is Selenium which is their flagship product, it is a full stack autonomous driving platform which does not rely on GPS or HD maps to be able to operate meaning that it can work in almost any environment both indoor and outdoor (even underground in mines for instance). Selenium also rather uniquely is not dependent on a specific type of sensor meaning that it is capable of working without Lidar for instance. Their other main platform is called Caesium which is a cloud-based fleet and data management platform which can be combined with Selenium and allow a collection of vehicles to work as a co-ordinated fleet. Both these highly advanced technologies supports Oxbotica’s unique horizontal B2B model providing operators, integrators and manufacturers the autonomy functionality and flexibility they need – be that a full stack or on a component-by-component basis.