The investment sits alongside a collaboration between Ocado and Oxbotica in relation to hardware and software interfaces for autonomous vehicles, enhancing and integrating Oxbotica’s autonomy software platform into a variety of vehicles. Ocado’s ultimate ambition is to enable its partners that use the Ocado Smart Platform to reduce the costs of last-mile delivery and other logistics operations.

The Macfarlanes commercial team drafted and negotiated the collaboration agreement governing the parties’ joint development work, with the agreement providing a roadmap for the autonomous technology development project and governing key principles on intellectual property ownership and routes to commercialisation for the output technology.

The Macfarlanes team was led by corporate and M&A partner Richard Burrows with assistance from solicitor Matilda Calvert-Barr. Commercial advice was provided by senior consultant Mark Lewis and solicitors Sekou Taylor and Rob Grant.

Richard Burrows comments: “We were delighted to have advised Ocado on its innovative partnership with Oxbotica to develop an extensive scope of autonomous solutions integrated into the Ocado Smart Platform, which will revolutionise the operations of the wider business.”