DP World Becomes First Partner of Dubai's SHIFFT Self-Driving Logistics Venture

The Dubai Future Foundation announced the partnership on November 6. It gives the three-month-old venture its first large operator and a fleet to work with. DP World runs more than 900 vehicles at Jebel Ali to move containers between terminals and to carry cargo between quay cranes, yard stacks and terminal gates. It operates thousands more across more than 60 ports and terminals worldwide. The partners say the systems could later extend across that wider network.

Port yards are a common early target for autonomy because the routes are fixed, the sites are closed to the public and the vehicles run around the clock. The SHIFFT work goes beyond driving software. The partners listed vehicle integration, autonomous driving, safety and assurance frameworks, fleet management and orchestration, traffic management and routing, operations in mixed-use environments, digital twins and situational intelligence. DP World said it would contribute operational expertise and capabilities in safety and workforce transformation.

Khalifa Al Qama, chief of research, development and innovation at the Dubai Future Foundation, said that selecting DP World "marks an important step" for the venture. Ibrahim Al Najjar, senior vice president for information technology at DP World GCC, said autonomous technology would make for "more predictable, resilient supply chains that keep cargo moving reliably." Paul Newman, Oxa's founder and chief executive, described the aim as turning industrial vehicles into "an intelligent, autonomous digital workforce."

SHIFFT was launched in early August as part of Dubai's Research, Development and Innovation Programme, which the foundation started in November 2024 to build a regional research base and create high-tech jobs. At launch, the partners said the first phase would focus on ports and airports. They said they aimed to put a first scalable commercial deployment into service in Dubai before the end of 2027.

The vehicles will use Oxa Driver, the company's configurable self-driving software, together with Oxa Hub, its cloud-based fleet management platform. They will also use Oxa's autonomy hardware, which is designed to fit onto existing fleets. The foundation has tied the venture to the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33, which aims to double the emirate's foreign trade by 2033.

The announcement did not say how many Jebel Ali vehicles would be converted, what the trials would cost or when they would start. Under the plan, SHIFFT and DP World will first validate the technology at Jebel Ali and then assess whether it can be deployed at DP World sites abroad.