The Oxford Foundry: What do we do?
We build Entrepreneurial Leaders and teams:
We’re committed to upskilling the future workforce. We provide our students with opportunities to co-create, collaborate and build solutions to global challenges. We’re on a mission to equip young people with crucial skills, including critical thinking, problem solving, team work and decision making, alongside empowering our future generations to lead with purpose and emotional intelligence, to be more resilient, and to learn from failure.

We build tech skills:
Delivering practical learning opportunities to build skills and understanding in areas such as coding, blockchain and AI, with a particular emphasis on peer-to-peer learning and knowledge exchange across academia and industry – globally and locally. We develop thought leadership in tech-enabled questions, such as “How do we ensure AI is diverse and inclusive?”, and “How can we use blockchain technology to universally broaden access to finance?”

We build and accelerate ventures:
Our accelerator, OXFO L.E.V8, is based in the upper floor of the Foundry. Through the accelerator, a select number of startups are provided with co-working space as well as a suite of support to accelerate their growth – all of this is provided at no charge, and without handover of IP from students to the Foundry. The accelerator supports real businesses, with formed teams, and traction. It is sector agnostic, and focuses on ventures outside of research, whilst it benefits from being embedded in an established and powerful academic setting. Although it is equity and IP free, the L.E.V8 accelerator programme is extremely competitive. To date our ventures have raised £7m investment and are creating positive change to people around the world.

We build and sustain networks:
We’ve built a thriving global community of entrepreneurial students, staff, alumni, mentors, advisors and leaders. Our community is open to everyone at Oxford and alumni and we harness the best global talent.