Huawei has been revealed as an LP in Oxford Sciences Innovation, having made its investment late last year before the university decided to block the corporate from philanthropic donations.

Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), the university venture fund of University of Oxford, has added China-based telecoms equipment and services provider Huawei as a limited partner, the Financial Times reported yesterday. Huawei is believed to have bought 4.1 million shares over the previous year, through a Dutch subsidiary called Huawei Technologies Cooeperatief, taking its stake to about 0.7%. Huawei has never been listed on OSI’s website as a backer. The deal was concluded late last year before University of Oxford blocked the firm’s philanthropic donations due to fears over its influence in the UK tech segment, and a spokesperson for OSI said the corporate would not have “special access to [OSI] companies or their underlying technology.” US sanctions have begun to bite Huawei’s innovation strategy, with the FT reporting its Futurewei collaboration with University of California, Berkeley had been forced into hundreds of redundancies. OSI has raised more than £600m ($737m) since its founding in 2015, anchored by the university and with additional contributions from investors including GV, part of internet and technology conglomerate Alphabet, and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Other limited partners include commercialisation firm IP Group, Wellcome Trust, Lansdowne Partners and Invesco Asset Management. Beleaguered fund manager Woodford Investment Management reportedly sold off its $69.6m stake to family offices and unnamed international investors in May 2019.

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