Industrial Mobile Autonomy is Inevitable

A few months ago, I became the CEO of Oxa, the company I founded and have been leading in and driving since inception. There is no better time to do so. It is a delight and part of my long-term vision. When I founded Oxa, the technology needed my singular focus. Since day one, I have been maniacally focused on ensuring we have the correct engineering to deliver on the promise and products that autonomy underpins. Today, Oxa has the correct approach and technology for the problem set and it has the correct business approach.

I want to talk about how strategy and technology and leadership mix. Technology, strategy, Go To Market (GTM) and partnerships converge to form complete products and now is the time for me to bring all that together; supported by our investors and driven by the Oxbots.

In the opening chapter of this new era, our first complete autonomy product was CE marked. Much more to come on what it means to build a physical AI product which is certified safe. Hold that thought…

Under my leadership, I am pleased to leave the on-road domain to “later”. While I am incredibly proud that an Oxa customer carried 20,000 public passengers in a public transport system in 2025, the reality is that the route to scaling and profitability in the on-road space is currently fraught with (massively) expensive peril. Regulation is uncertain, costs are astronomical, customer ROI is opaque, timescales are long and routes to market depend on OEMs or Tier 1s with thin margins and long planning cycles.

While I will no longer be flag waving across the AV-space publicly as the UK CAV-CAM champion in the UK Automotive Council, I will continue to be a positive supporter of players in the on-road space. They must remain safe, transparent, honest and build trust with the public, staying away from hyperbole. It matters. But my entrepreneurial focus is now on Oxa - here in the UK, in North America and our other export ventures.

The “Now”

Look around you right now, where you are. I bet almost everything you see (unless you are on a country walk) was shipped, moved through an airport or was shunted around an industrial yard at some point. That’s where IMA plays out. That’s where Oxa will be.

Oxa’s focus is now firmly on Industrial Mobile Autonomy (IMA). The customer and commercial proposition in IMA is spectacular. IMA is inevitable. This isn’t new territory for us; Oxa has been operating in off-highway industrial settings since its early days as Oxbotica. The work industrial vehicles undertake underpins our lives. Budgets are already allocated, fleets exist and are being renewed but carry with them continual OPEX burdens. This is the problem Oxa’s advanced autonomy will dissolve. The only question is "Do you need a driver?” and the answer will be "Ya, but not a human one.”

To deliver IMA, we are pioneering what the world now recognises as Physical AI. Let me be clear: this is much more than just a name. Physical AI, in our case IMA, requires both modern AI and advanced robotics. Our architecture uniquely merges the best of both worlds. It is a systems combination of hardware, software, workflow management and customer integrations, all of which must be safe and explainable and economically massively advantageous to users.

Our Physical AI software architecture leverages data-driven reasoning without ever abandoning actual reasoning or explainability. It allows us to easily configure complex, custom site-specific behaviours (this happens all the time in industrial settings) that generalises broadly to new places - without being rules-driven or costing the earth to teach. And by the way, I encourage any and all to reject the “It’s either rules or end-to-end“ narrative that is out there. The right answer is far more complex, and it is authentic. And again it is not just software - the “physical” bit is pervasive - ours is a robotics problem. This becomes self-evident when achieving safety certification. At this juncture, far from hype, watertight and provable arguments in the way you have combined the task, the vehicle, AIs, software systems, the compute and sensor designs, make for a certifiably safe solution.

We have stopped talking about a software-only solution to autonomy and we are not banking on others to make a complete solution from our contribution. Instead, we are building the complete solution required by the industrial sector, which is poorly served in autonomy, yet is uniquely suited to Oxa. Oxa is awesome at that solution, and we are going to be a category-defining business leading in IMA.

If you own or work for a business of a type which makes you now think “Hey, if I had IMA, what OPEX would change? What could I invent and benefit from with that flexibility?” Well, then you can benefit from being part of our GTM.

We will accelerate you, we will enable you, and you should speak to us. IMA is inevitable.

Our heritage sets us up and apart. Our energy is enormous. Our conviction is total. And it’s such an honour to directly lead.