Oxford Metrics Pays £525,000 for Move AI After a Competitive Bid, Then Cuts Its Own Guidance

Oxford Metrics, the LSE-listed owner of motion capture specialist Vicon, has acquired the assets of London-based Move AI for £525,000 in cash — roughly £725,000 once immediate transaction expenses are included — after a competitive bid process. The price is striking against Move AI's scale: the company reported unaudited revenue of £1.1 million for the year ended 31 December 2025, and its technology has been used by Epic Games, Ubisoft, Sega, Disney, Sony, Paramount, Nike and Meta.

Move AI combines artificial intelligence, computer vision and an understanding of human biomechanics to convert ordinary video into detailed 3D motion data without markers or specialist suits. Its products range from single-camera tools for individual creators to professional multi-camera and real-time systems, including its flagship Genesis platform, and it can capture multiple people moving across spaces as large as a football pitch — inside a studio or out.

Under the deal, Move AI's technology, intellectual property, patents, specialist team and customers all transfer to Vicon, Oxford Metrics' motion capture division. The acquisition follows Vicon's purchase of Captive Devices in September 2026, which added markerless facial capture to its body-tracking capabilities; Move AI now extends the markerless toolset with single-camera and large-volume capture, giving the division an end-to-end span across facial, body and full-environment capture.

The modest price reflects a difficult market. UK tech outlet BusinessCloud called it a cut-price deal, noting that industry-wide investment across film, television and games has fallen. On the same morning, Oxford Metrics reported revenue below market expectations, citing lower demand for new virtual-production stages and several large contracts that have been delayed.

The numbers behind that warning are sharp. Oxford Metrics now expects revenue of £47 million to £51 million for the fifteen months ending 31 December 2026, against market forecasts of £56.2 million, and an adjusted operating loss of £0.5 million to £3.9 million where a £3 million profit had been expected. The company is accelerating cost cuts targeting £1.5 million to £2 million in annualised savings and launched a £3 million share buyback starting on 12 October.

One bright spot frames the acquisition's logic. Oxford Metrics said demand from robotics companies remained encouraging, particularly in humanoid robot development and drone tracking — exactly the markets where markerless capture of unscripted human movement matters most. Non-executive chair and interim chief executive Gary Bullard said the deal strengthens Vicon's offering and creates opportunities in sport, biomechanics and human performance analysis alongside its entertainment applications.

The transaction is a small one by AI M&A standards, but it is a clean data point on where value sits in motion capture right now: a markerless software company with blue-chip customers and £1.1 million in revenue changed hands for about half its annual sales, while the optical hardware incumbent buys the capability rather than building it. Consolidation, not greenfield investment, is how the capture market is absorbing the virtual production downturn.