Kubota’s 2026 strategy: How the OEM is commercialising automation, moving beyond prototypes

Kubota’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) appearance was just the beginning of where the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is taking its digital farming capabilities, as the company moves to commercialise its ag automation offerings while developing new products to address persistent labour challenges, Brett McMickell, CTO at Kubota North America, told AgTechNavigator.

At CES, Kubota revealed the autonomous 105.7-horsepower diesel Kubota M5 Narrow tractor, which is commercially available, and a “transformer” robot concept called KVPR, as AgTechNavigator previously reported. The OEM plans to build on these automation capabilities, expanding beyond mowing and spraying in the future, McMickell noted.

“What we demonstrated this year ... was the commercialisation of an autonomous vehicle. So, we are putting this into reality, and that differentiated us from a lot of the competitors at CES. We actually had a commercial vehicle — not a prototype this year. So, we are going beyond just the concept stage and realizing this vision,” McMickell elaborated.

He added, “The big challenges do not need big machines. They need smarter solutions. And so that is really at the core of where we are going now.”

How physical AI creates new ag automation opportunities

Automation might not be table stakes yet for OEM, but labour challenges are pushing the ag industry to think outside the box, and tech advancements are making it cheaper to create automation systems and products, McMickell explained.

Additionally, automation has matured and is becoming more accepted by consumers, exemplified by the emergence of Waymo self-driving cars, McMickell noted. With maturity, the price of developing solutions has declined, allowing Kubota to more easily — and more cost-effectively — incorporate automation into its vehicles as well as develop entirely new vehicles, he added.

Physical AI allows processing on a chip, as opposed to a data centre, making it easier to build automation products, McMickell explained.

“OEMs are more concentrated on [automation], and that is due to a pull from the customers. We have been talking about labour shortages ... for quite a while now, but you are getting to a point where there is urgency about the viability of the agricultural business, and so there is a general pull for this technology, which is why you see the OEMs looking at it,” he said.

Academics and engineers also are working to advance chip technology and data architectures, further empowering automation advancements, he added. Kubota works with research universities, like Arizona State University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and the University of Southern California, to develop new methodologies along the edge-to-cloud continuum.

“There has been a lot of research done in neural computing, and there are some platforms that are still in academia that are coming into commercial viability, whether that is from Nvidia or others. I do believe that there’s going to be some interesting changes in the way that we build and think about hardware architecture that will further unlock the AI,” he explained.

To acquire or partner? Kubota does both

Building the future of ag automation not only requires advancement in underlying technologies and frameworks, but it also requires collaboration between large companies and start-ups, whether that is through partnerships or acquisitions, McMickell said.

In 2025, Kubota partnerships with two automation companies, California-based Agtonomy — which resulted in the development of the Kubota M5 Narrow tractor — and Norgewian start-up Kilter to prototype a weeding robot.

While active with partners in 2025, Kubota was quiet on the acquisition front, having purchased image analysis and AI start-up Bloomfield Robotics in Sept. 2024. However, the OEM is “always looking” for potential acquisition targets, McMickell pointed out.

Whether partnering or acquiring, Kubota is working to meet the needs of farmers, including providing more insight into their operations, McMickell said.

“If you are looking at providing agronomic data to the farmer and providing those recommendations, it is a very complex problem that requires a lot of specialties to come together. Kubota has a strong history and a connection to our farmers, but there are other companies out there with a chemical background to understand some of the complexities of what is going on. We need their help to build up the right models, and then we can do what we do with the distribution and that connection to the farmer,” he elaborated.