What Evolve 2026 Told Me About Where This Industry Is Headed
Evolve 2026 was my first user conference at VitalEdge as CRO, and I joined the company knowing that it had a strong commitment to its customers and the heavy equipment community at large. But there’s a difference between knowing that on paper and walking into a room full of dealers, OEM partners, and industry leaders who are genuinely glad to be there together. That’s what I found in San Diego.
The energy at Evolve 2026 was unlike anything I’d walked into before. Over three days, we covered a lot of ground: Vikram’s CEO keynote on intelligent growth, Richie’s keynote on the conversational revolution in AI, the formal launch of VitalityAI, panels of industry professionals and dealership leaders sharing real transformation stories, hands-on Innovation Rooms, concurrent workshops across service, parts, sales, and rental, and the Dealer Excellence Awards. Our MC Todd Cohen kept all of it moving with the kind of energy that makes a packed day agenda feel like it flew by.
It was a full 4 days, and every minute was worth it.
The VitalityAI Launch
One of the most significant moments of Evolve 2026 was the formal launch of VitalityAI, our agentic AI suite built specifically for heavy equipment dealerships. The announcement came Monday, and the conversations it sparked carried through the rest of our time together.
VitalityAI isn’t a general-purpose AI tool adapted for dealerships. It’s purpose-built for the workflows, data structures, and operational realities of equipment dealers, embedded directly into the ERP and DMS. Insights Agent has been in the market since November, but Evolve gave us was the chance to show dealers the fuller picture: specialized agents coordinated across service, parts, rental, and leadership, designed to help dealers shift from reactive to proactive decision-making. That vision fully came to life on Tuesday when Sachin Date, Mitsu Madhani, and Erick Rowe walked through ‘The Future of Intelligent Growth: Building the Dealership of Tomorrow.”
AI Is Moving from Hype to Accountability
The industry keynote from Richie Etwaru on the conversational revolution set a tone early in the conference that I kept coming back to throughout the week. Richie operates across industries at the intersection of AI, ethics, and strategy, and he has advised companies like John Deere and Boeing, so his perspective isn’t abstract. His argument, that conversational and agentic AI isn’t arriving as a future event but is already reshaping how work gets done, landed differently in a room full of heavy equipment dealers. The professionals in this room have long memories when it comes to technology promises. They wanted proof, not potential. Richie gave them both.
What I heard across the three days was a meaningful shift in how dealers are engaging with AI. The debate about whether it would pay off for a business running heavy equipment feels largely settled. The questions now are harder and more specific: how do we get started without disrupting operations we can’t afford to slow down, how do we build on a data foundation that’s actually trustworthy, and how do we know when it’s working. That move from hype to accountability is healthy, and it reflects a real maturity in how this industry thinks about technology investment.
The Dealer and OEM Relationship Is Evolving
The OEM Executive Panel was one of the sessions I was most interested to see. With Brian McGuire moderating and leaders from Hyster Yale, CNH, and Volvo CE on the panel, the conversation was candid in a way that’s not always easy to achieve at a conference.
There’s a real renegotiation happening between OEMs and their dealer networks around data, expectations, and what a modern technology partnership looks like. OEMs want visibility that helps them support their networks more effectively. Dealers want to engage with that ecosystem in a way that strengthens their own position. What I came away with is that both sides are genuinely looking for the same outcome. Getting there requires systems built for real collaboration, not just reporting, and a shared willingness to talk honestly about what that looks like.
That spirit carried into the Industry Association Panel Wednesday morning, where leaders from AED, ARA, MHEDA, and Farm Equipment Magazine joined Todd Cohen for a conversation about where the industry is headed on workforce, technology, and collaboration. What struck me about that panel was how aligned the perspectives were. The challenges dealers are navigating aren’t isolated to any one segment or region. The associations representing this industry are seeing the same pressures and asking the same questions.
Hands-On Time With Technology
The Innovation Rooms were one of the formats I was most interested to see in action, and they worked the way I’d hoped. Rather than a traditional demo environment, we built spaces where dealers could spend real time with the technology, one on one with product experts, working through their actual workflows and scenarios. We also made sure it was a place people actually wanted to spend time in. Massage chairs, a snack station, and an interactive wall kept the energy up and the conversations flowing.
Dealers don’t want to see tools in isolation. They want to understand how a capability fits into the way a service advisor starts their morning, or how a rental coordinator tracks a contract through its lifecycle. The moment a conversation moves from “here’s what it does” to “here’s how it works in your situation,” something clicks. That’s the kind of engagement that helps dealers leave with clear thinking about their next step.
Rental and Operational Efficiency
Rental came up more consistently than almost any other topic across the three days. Tuesday’s session with Alise Moncure and Ross Johnson set up a conversation that continued through the afternoon workshops and into the hallways. Dealers are treating rental as a serious growth driver, asking serious questions about utilization, fleet visibility, and how to keep rental operations connected to the rest of the business rather than running on separate systems.
Operational efficiency ran alongside it as a constant thread. Service cycle times, parts availability, technician productivity: these came up in nearly every conversation I had. Dealers know their capacity to grow is tied to how tightly their operations run.
Learning from Dealers Who Are Further Along
Some of what I’ll carry home from Evolve 2026 didn’t come from the main keynotes. The dealer panel on Tuesday, with leaders from Atlantic Tractor, Sonsray, Ag Revolution, Vermeer Southeast, and Titan Machinery, was one of the more honest conversations I’ve been part of in a conference setting. People talked about what they tried, where it got hard, and what they’d do differently. Dealers trust other dealers, and that kind of peer learning is hard to manufacture.
The Dealer Excellence Awards closed out that recognition well. Seeing dealerships celebrated for measurable results and operational leadership was a good reminder of how much is already happening across this industry.
Intelligent Growth Means Being Intentional
The theme for Evolve 2026 was Intelligent Growth in the Age of Responsible AI. I think it’s worth being direct about what that means, because it’s easy for a conference theme to sound like marketing language and mean nothing in practice.
Growth that’s built on systems that don’t scale, or on AI tools that haven’t been integrated properly, or on data nobody fully trusts yet, isn’t growth that holds. What I heard from the most forward-thinking dealers at Evolve is a real emphasis on getting the foundation right before moving fast. Responsible AI isn’t a cautious position. It’s a practical one. Deploying technology in ways that actually work for the people using it is how you get results that stick.
One More Thing About San Diego
I’d be leaving something out if I didn’t mention the other side of Evolve 2026. The venue at the Sheraton Marina was genuinely beautiful, and the team made good use of it. The offsite event at Portside Pier on Monday night was one of those evenings that gets talked about for a while: waterfront dinner, good energy, and, yes, a Top Gun impersonator who I’ll just say fully committed to the bit. It was a great night.
Those moments matter. The conversations that happen over dinner or on the water are often where some of the most useful thinking starts, and a lot of the relationships built during those evenings carry the work forward. I’m glad we made room for it.
Looking Ahead
I came back from San Diego with a clear sense that this industry is in a serious moment of transition, and that the people in that room are taking it seriously. The questions being asked are better than they were a year ago. The momentum around AI, rental growth, and operational modernization feels well past theoretical.
I’m grateful to everyone who made it to Evolve 2026, who asked hard questions, shared something honest from their experience, and showed up for the conversations this industry needs to be having.
There’s a lot of work ahead.
I think we’re ready for it.
