CAT, Deere are both doing very interesting things with older autonomy techniques. Deere has acquired several companies, and partnered with others to bring in talent from outside. CAT has worked with outside companies (notably Trimble, Topcon) for key technologies when it makes a big difference. Both are awesome companies, but not AI/ML companies at the core and it'll take a lot of work for them to get there. I think this is very much like the self driving world 10 years ago where OEMs tried very hard to become software companies, but ultimately Cruise and Waymo were the ones that executed.

Neither Cruise nor Waymo seems to be profitable yet, and the jury is still out on whether they will win the market. They may be the MySpaces (or the Fiskers) of autonomous driving.

To the parent posters point though, those manufacturers are holding outsized control over what can be retrofit to their machines, so to disrupt them, you have to make your own machines. Working on and owning heavy equipment myself, I of course have looked at it and thought there's a lot to improve, but at the the same time, I don't really see where the big brain Silicon Valley + venture bucks ethos can be applied to the space, it would be a long and slow grind of doing mostly straightforward mechanical engineering and supply chain/vendor agreements to build something like a bulldozer, just to enter a near impenetrable market due to many existing sunk costs and long relationships between buyers and the existing manufacturers.

my understanding is that the barrier to entry in this space isnt manufacturing the equipment, but rather having a large dealer network for people to use for service and repairs. my impression is that people largely buy whatever has a nearby dealer for this reason. and these dealer connections are more and more important as they make it more and more impossible to work and maintain the equipment as an individual

The manufactures are aware of monopoly laws and will give you the 'key' to put your own thing on and even sell it - for a 'reasonable fee' which may be six figures and proff you will care about safety. Universities have got the key for student projects (under nda)

disclosure: I work for jonh deere but am not speaking for the company. The above is all I feel I can say on the subject

Orrrrrr...venture capital money comes in and they sell for a loss until they achieve monopoly status and jack up the rates!

Might be less successful now that money isn't free.

Venture hasn’t managed to make a dent in Nvidia despite massive investments.

Maybe they aren’t as powerful as you think outside the comparatively trivial “build some software” markets. Hell even in networking, compute and storage there are only three or four real success stories in the last two and a half _decades_.