Huawei has bought a stake in the company that commercialises research at Oxford University , giving the Chinese telecoms group access to soe of the early stage technology developed by British academics.
Oxford Sciences Innovation, whose mission is to bring Oxford’s best ideas to the world, is the largest fund dedicated to academic spin-offs in the world, which has raised over £600m in four years from 70 shareholders led by the university and including Google’s venture arm GV, Sequola Capital and Temasek the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.
Huawei Technologies Cooperatiegf, a Dutch subsidiary acquired 4.1m shares over the year, a 0.7 per cent stake and buying into the fund gives the Chinese group , which has been blacklisted by the US as a threat to national security, a view of OSI’s portfolio companies and intellectual property.
The investment came shortly before Oxford University cut its ties with Huawei, saying that it would not accept any research funding pr philanthropy from the company , Oxford said it had taken the decision “in the light of public concerns raised in recent months surrounding UK partnerships with Huawei” and that the policy remained in place
OSI has what one venture capitalist called “a stranglehold” on research at Oxford and has backed early stage companies in life science, software, industrial technology and computation. It’s portfolio includes Oxford Nanoimaging,, Vaccitech and Oxford flow. Huawei has one of the world’s largest research budgets and has backed numerous early stage companies in the US and elsewhere.