Chancellor Rachel Reeves is preparing to inject tens of millions of pounds into self-driving car pioneers Oxa, as the Government gets ready to unleash autonomous vehicles on Britain’s roads. The £28bn National Wealth Fund (NWF), which is backed by the Treasury, is nearing a deal to plough taxpayer cash into Oxa, the start-up founded by experts from Oxford University, says the Daily Telegraph.
Oxa, formerly Oxbotica, was the first company to trial driverless cars on UK roads in 2016 and has previously raised more than £180m from investors.
It has focused on developing software that can make any vehicle autonomous, rather than building self-driving cars itself. Its technology is used to power driverless shuttle buses and industrial vehicles.
A deal with Oxa, which was founded by Oxford University professor Paul Newman in 2014, would represent one of the government’s biggest direct bets on an AI business.
It comes as the Government prepares to launch driverless taxi and bus trials on British roads later this year.
The new funding comes via the NWF, which was launched by Labour in 2024 as a successor to the UK Infrastructure Bank. The fund is operationally independent from the Treasury, but was set up to fuel the government’s growth agenda with key investments.
Its typical direct investment size is £25m to £50m. Its cash injections are intended to help incentivise hundreds of millions in further funding from private investors. The fund has so far made more than £200m in equity investments.
It has also provided billions of pounds in debt funding to clean power and battery manufacturing projects. In its first year under Labour, the fund invested £3.6bn.
(Picture: Oxa/DHL)
