Oxford Dynamics Secures BAE Systems Investment to Scale Its AI and Robotics Technology for Defence

August 7, 2025

Oxford Dynamics, the UK-based deep-tech company developing AI-driven autonomous systems for defence and national security, secured a strategic investment from BAE Systems in August 2025. The investment amount was not disclosed. Until this raise, Oxford Dynamics had been entirely self-funded from commercial revenues, with additional support from government research contracts including a £1 million contract from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and subsequent DASA and DSTL-funded programmes. The collaboration with BAE Systems will integrate Oxford Dynamics’ technology into BAE’s Prophesea platform — a digital solution that helps defence organisations maintain the operational readiness of critical assets including warships, armoured vehicles, and combat aircraft — as the first phase of a broader partnership targeting next-generation defence capability across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. Oxford Dynamics was founded in 2020 by Shefali Sharma, Mike Lawton, and Dr Edward Jackson, based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) at Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire.

The nature of modern defence challenges is changing in ways that place a premium on information advantage and autonomous capability. The battlespace is generating data at a rate and variety that no human team can process in real time: sensor feeds from aircraft, ground vehicles, drones, satellites, and cyber infrastructure combine into an information environment of extraordinary complexity. The ability to make fast, correct decisions under this kind of information load — what military doctrine calls the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) — increasingly depends on AI systems that can ingest and interpret multi-modal data, surface the most relevant insights, and recommend or execute actions with the speed that modern threats demand.

Oxford Dynamics has built a suite of products addressing this requirement. AVIS (A Very Intelligent System) is the company’s flagship AI engine: a multi-agent system that processes data across multiple modalities — text, imagery, video, radar, LiDAR, and electronic signals — and delivers explainable insights calibrated to operator decision-making needs. Unlike AI systems that produce outputs without rationale, AVIS is designed to show its reasoning, a feature critical for defence applications where operators need to understand the basis of a recommendation before acting on it. SR-1 is a sensor fusion system that embeds AVIS for drone detection and threat characterisation, enabling 360-degree passive scouting and AI-directed investigation in contested environments. Strider is a semi-autonomous ground robot designed for operations in environments that are too hazardous for human operators — including chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incident response — combining Oxford Dynamics’ embedded AI with rugged hardware capable of navigating difficult terrain.

BAE Systems’ Group Managing Director of Digital Intelligence, Andrea Thompson, cited the UK government’s Strategic Defence Review as context for the investment, noting the review’s call to “accelerate innovation, deliver sovereign capability and build a more integrated and lethal force.” Oxford Dynamics co-founder Dr Edward Jackson described the collaboration as giving the company “the platform to quickly scale our technology into systems that will make a real difference to our armed forces.” Oxford Dynamics’ CEO Shefali Sharma has emphasised that the company’s strategic priority is not VC-scale fundraising but speed of deployment — getting trusted AI into real operational use rather than optimising for valuation.

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