Waze, Nokia, and CNH's Billion-Dollar Blunder in the Making

In 2008, Nokia had a problem.

They were at the time the most dominant mobile phone company in the world, worth more than $150 billion. But they could see the winds changing. Smartphones were coming. Data was rising. And they knew the future wasn't just about hardware. It was about navigation. Real-time traffic intelligence and dynamic routing.

So they did what big companies tend to do: they bought the future. Or at least, they tried to.

They acquired a company called Navteq for $8.1 billion. Navteq was a massive infrastructure company that built traffic-monitoring systems by embedding sensors in roads and installing hardware at intersections. Nokia's vision was bold: a sensor-connected world that would feed traffic data back into their mapping software. It was high-tech. It was capital-intensive. It was top-down innovation at its most impressive.

At the same time, 2,000 miles away in Tel Aviv, three people were working on a different idea. They didn't have billions. They didn't have a factory. They didn't even have a brand.

What they had was a question: What if the infrastructure for real-time navigation was already out there, not something to build, but something to tap into?

As a result, Waze didn't start by laying cable or deploying hardware. They began by listening to the people already driving the roads. Every smartphone became a node. Every trip, a data point. Every delay, detour, or slowdown became part of a living map that updated itself in real-time.

Instead of building and installing more expensive infrastructure, Waze realized the infrastructure was the drivers…already moving, already connected, already transmitting. The genius wasn't in building new systems. It was in seeing the existing system differently.

What Waze saw, and Nokia missed, was that the real unlock wasn't more hardware. It was an intelligence layer waiting to be activated.

The Pattern of Disruption

Five years later, Google acquired Waze.

Meanwhile, Nokia's $8.1 billion bet on hardware-based infrastructure failed. Their market cap collapsed. In April of 2014, the company was sold to Microsoft for $7.2 billion, less than what they paid for Navteq alone. Nokia failed because they attempted to pull the past into the future; they tried to solve today's problem with yesterday's solution. They believed the future required embedding intelligence into infrastructure.

Waze realized the real opportunity was designing an experience around the intelligence already in motion.

Reframing the Future

During periods of great technological change, there's always a moment.

Sometimes quiet, sometimes explosive, when someone stops trying to build a better version of the past and starts asking a better question about the future.

It's the moment James Watt stopped comparing steam engines on technical specs and started talking about horsepower, a term that reframed industrial progress in language we could feel.

It's the moment David Sarnoff stopped selling radio as a news medium and started inviting people to experience live prizefights and presidential addresses from their living rooms, turning sound waves into shared moments.

And it's the moment Waze saw what Nokia couldn't. They didn't just engineer new technology. They reframed the problem. Navigation wasn't about building infrastructure. It was about unlocking intelligence from the traffic system already in motion.

Stories like these are more than cautionary tales for legacy companies. They're pattern recognition for what comes next. Because the truth is, this same tension, between infrastructure and intelligence, between engineering and framing, is playing out again.

But this time, it's not about phones. It's about tractors.

And once again, a dominant incumbent is betting on control, complexity, and capital expenditure while the real opportunity lies in something far simpler and far more powerful.

Not a Machine That Does More. But a System That Thinks Differently.

Earlier this month, CNH Industrial, the world's second-largest agricultural equipment manufacturer, took the stage at the New York Stock Exchange to lay out its vision for the future.

It was polished. It was confident. It spanned 89 slides.

The story was full of promise: artificial intelligence, smart machines, integrated tech stacks, precision platforms. A modern vision backed by legacy muscle.

But one slide said the quiet part out loud.

Path planning, the foundation of autonomy, is coming by 2030. Something even more basic, guidance line management, will also only arrive by 2030.

Not full autonomy. Not decision-making. Just the basic ability for a machine to chart its path in the field.

CNH's vision of the future is five years away. And in the meantime, growers are expected to wait.

• Wait for the next generation of equipment.
• Wait for the full rollout of factory-fit technology.
• Wait for dealer networks to "transform" their capabilities.
• Wait for autonomy to be handed down from on high.

But path planning doesn't need to be built. It's already here. In fact, it's already compatible with CNH's machines.

Modern equipment is equipped with GPS, RTK, section control, and in-cab connectivity. The intelligence layer isn't missing; it's underutilized. Not because it doesn't exist, but because the current system continues to frame autonomy as a hardware problem, not a software unlock.

That slide could have landed very differently. If CNH had acknowledged the third-party autonomy companies already integrated into their FieldOps platform, it would have made their vision both credible and more viable, today! But by ignoring those partners and doubling down on building it all in-house, they're not just delaying progress: they're selling their vision, and their growers, short.

The Intelligence Is Already Here

Verge already integrates with CNH. Our product is available to CNH users through their FieldOps platform. Growers using CNH equipment aren't waiting for a 2030 rollout; they're planning, optimizing, and executing full-field operations today.

In fact, over the last four years, more than 15,000 path plans have been exported from Verge directly to CNH machines. That number doesn't just reflect usage. It reflects urgency.

It proves that CNH's own customers aren't sitting idle, waiting for factory-fit autonomy to arrive. They're already activating the intelligence in their machines, because Verge gives them a way to do it now.

That's not just usage. That's momentum. That's proof that CNH's own customers aren't waiting to be told they're ready. They already are.

This isn't just a gap in product delivery. It's a gap in mindset.

By pegging autonomy's arrival to 2030, CNH isn't accelerating progress, they're metering it. They're managing innovation through internal cycles, dealer enablement, and manufacturing lead times.

But breakthroughs don't wait for rollout schedules. They come from seeing the system differently. And from building the tools to act on that insight right now.

That's what makes CNH's roadmap so revealing.

Because the real question isn't, "When will autonomy arrive?"

It's, "Why are growers still being told to wait for it?"

The Mismatch Between Promise and Possibility

There's a growing mismatch between what's being promised in the boardroom and what's actually possible in the field.

While CNH forecasts autonomy five years out, growers are already sitting in cabs equipped with GPS, RTK, section control, and in-cab connectivity. The hardware is here. The intelligence layer is ready. What's missing isn't technology, it's permission.

And while legacy players manage timelines and orchestrate dealer rollouts, others are moving faster by unlocking what already exists.

Because real autonomy doesn't start with a driverless tractor, it starts the moment a system can reliably capture grower intent, plan the optimal path, and enable machines to execute without guesswork or wasted motion.

That system exists. It's what we've built at Verge.

Our software enables full-field path planning today, turning modern equipment into intelligent systems that think ahead. Operators can pre-plan every pass, optimize for traffic flow, adjust for implement width, and ensure that execution follows an optimized map, not a best guess.

It doesn't start with the machine. It starts with the map.

That shift, from hardware to intelligence, is what makes Verge different.

We're not waiting for autonomy to arrive. We're enabling it now, not by adding new iron, but by unlocking the potential that already exists in the field. Our customers aren't being told to be patient. They're making better decisions today.

This isn't automation in the old sense. A faster sprayer or a shinier combine. This is the foundation of true autonomy: a system that compounds in precision, learning, and value over time.

While CNH promises autonomy by 2030, Verge is already helping growers experience it. One field, one pass, one decision at a time.

Because autonomy doesn't come from the factory. It's designed into the way you farm.