Oxa and Dubai Future Foundation form autonomous logistics venture

Oxa and Dubai Future Foundation form autonomous logistics venture

3 August 2026: Oxa, an autonomous vehicle software company, and the Dubai Future Foundation have launched a joint venture called SHIFFT to put self-driving vehicles to work in ports and airports. The venture's first scalable commercial deployment is promised in Dubai before the end of 2027.

Not yet independently verified. Oxa alone published this. The page gives no ownership split, funding, customers or deployment site. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What SHIFFT will sell

SHIFFT is to combine self-driving technology into what the announcement calls a fully integrated autonomous logistics and worksite intelligence product, so that a customer gets end-to-end operational deployment rather than a software licence. The focus is on ports and airports, where fleets of work vehicles move cargo and equipment around a fixed site.

The technology comes from Oxa. The vehicles will run Oxa Driver, the company's self-driving software, which it describes as safe, configurable and explainable, together with Oxa Hub, its cloud-based fleet management software. Oxa's autonomy hardware will also be used and is designed to integrate with fleets that operators already own.

The Dubai case

The foundation ties the venture to a city target: Dubai wants to double its foreign trade volume by 2033. SHIFFT is part of the foundation's Research, Development and Innovation Programme, launched in November 2024 to build a knowledge-based economy, create high-tech jobs and make Dubai a regional research hub.

Khalifa Al Qama, Chief of Dubai's RDI Ecosystem, overseen by the Dubai Future Foundation, said the venture reflects the programme's purpose, "bringing together global expertise and local capabilities to develop commercially viable solutions with real-world impact".

Oxa's side of the deal

Paul Newman, Oxa's founder and chief executive, said the new business will speed up the commercialisation of what Oxa calls Industrial Mobile Autonomy, "turning ordinary work vehicles into a digital workforce". He said the technology would be used in major industrial environments to improve efficiency, reliability and safety for operators of industrial fleets.

What the announcement leaves out

The page is short on the commercial detail a buyer or investor would want. It does not state how the venture is owned, how much either partner is putting in, which ports or airports are involved, which vehicle types come first, or who the first customers are. The only date is the 2027 deployment, and "before the end of 2027" is a ceiling, not a schedule.

It also says nothing about the permits an autonomous vehicle needs to run in Dubai, so the regulatory route to the first deployment cannot be judged from this source. The announcement is a statement of intent by the two partners, and the next evidence would be a named site and a vehicle count.

Company profile on TrustList: Oxa

Sources

• Oxa: Dubai Future Foundation and Oxa Launch Joint Venture, Transforming Dubai into Global Hub for Autonomous Logistics, 3 August 2026