LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - British self-driving startup

Oxa has raised $103 million from investors to scale up

autonomous vehicle operations focused on ports, airports,

warehouses and other industrial applications, it said on

Wednesday.

Oxa, based in Oxford, central England, said that $50 million

of its Series D funding round came from the UK's National Wealth

Fund and included investments from chipmaker Nvidia's ( NVDA )

venture capital arm NVentures and BP's bp Ventures.

Unlike robotaxi developers intent on passenger cars, Oxa is

focused on what founder Paul Newman calls "industrial mobile

autonomy" where there is less complexity because there is less

traffic and fewer encounters with pedestrians.

"We think trying to do that in the passenger car space is

super, super hard," Newman said. "In the industrial space, it's

extremely clear what you need to do to make a product."

Oxa designs the software and hardware to go on vehicles and

can "autonomise" a heavy-duty port truck in under a day.

The latest round brings the company's total funding to over

$250 million and will enable it to expand operations with

customers including DHL, BP and Vantec.

Newman also said the financing would go towards deploying

Oxa's technology in projects that the company will announce in

the near future.

Late last month, British self-driving startup Wayve, which is

working with Uber on robotaxis and with several automakers on

driver-assistance technology, announced a $1.2 billion Series D

funding round.