Labour's £28bn Fund Invests Millions in Oxa Self-Driving Cars

Rachel Reeves is preparing to inject tens of millions of pounds into an Oxford self-driving car pioneer as Labour 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 driverless car start-up founded by experts from Oxford University. 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. The Telegraph revealed in December that Oxa had secured about £15m from existing investors, including the venture capital arm of BP, and that it was in talks for a further “landmark frontier AI investment” early this year. In September, Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, also expressed an interest in backing Oxa. At the time, he called the company an “incredible robotics, autonomous driving company” and said he would “invest in your next round”. 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. Ride-hailing businesses Uber and Lyft have announced plans to test self-driving taxis under new rules in the UK. Tesla has also been piloting its Full Self-Driving technology in Britain. Wayve, another UK driverless technology business that has raised more than £1bn, has a deal with Uber to launch public self-driving taxi trials in the UK 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. State backing would represent a major boost for Oxa, which has grappled with mounting losses and saw its valuation slashed by a key investor last year. IP Group, an early investor in the business, disclosed that it had cut Oxa’s value by two-thirds to £120m, down from more than £350m previously. An Oxa spokesman and the NWF declined to comment. The Treasury was contacted for comment.