Oxbotica scales mission under new brand

Just weeks after the autonomous vehicle software developer enlisted Google Cloud to accelerate the global take-up of its self-driving vehicle technology platform, Oxbotica has changed its name to Oxa.

The company, founded eight years ago, claims to be accelerating the current transition to self-driving technology. It has developed the software for businesses with transportation in its value chain to get the most from their fleets, wanting to deploy autonomy into their operations safely, efficiently and reliably. This ranges from the virtual testing environment, to the software driving the vehicles and the cloud-based management tool.

Oxa provides businesses with software which drives the vehicles, proprietary generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that accelerate deployment with Oxa MetaDriver and cloud-based tools for fleet management with Oxa Hub. The company’s platform can be used today across multiple industries, such as shared passenger transport, logistics, goods delivery, agriculture, energy and mining.

Oxa recently raised $140m in Series C funding to deploy its operating system for autonomy to customers around the world. Investors include Trimble Ventures, Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance, ENEOS Innovation Partners, BP ventures, BGF, Halma, Hostplus, Kiko Ventures (IP Group), Ocado Group, Tencent, Venture Science and ZF. To date, the business has raised approximately $225m.

It has teamed up with Ocado Group to develop a range of autonomous services for Ocado’s Smart Platform; ZF to develop an L4 self-driving system together, which will be first applied into ZF’s next-generation passenger shuttle; and is working with BP on autonomous offerings in the energy sector.

With Google Cloud’s products and expertise in cloud infrastructure, Oxa believes it will be able to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous software platform to customers around the world using the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, including its compute, storage and networking offerings, to host the platform.

In addition, Oxa will use Google Cloud’s cyber security technologies to help ensure secure use of autonomous mobility technology.

Effective immediately, the new brand is also said to reflect the company’s global vision and go-to-market strategy for its suite of software and services designed to unlock the benefits of self-driving technology for customers today.

The announcement also comes on the heels of the company joining forces with Goggo Network, which plans to introduce Oxa’s self-driving technology in its fleet of on-road autonomous electric vehicles across Europe.

“I am thrilled today to begin the next chapter of our business as Oxa,” said Oxa CEO Gavin Jackson. “At a time where organisations are faced with pressing challenges posed by driver shortages, high operational costs, service limitations and net-zero targets, we have a unique opportunity in the market today. With our solutions, we can deliver the transformative benefits of autonomy to businesses now.”