Trimble's strategic review of its transportation and logistics business remains open, with multiple outside parties still expressing interest in the unit, CEO Rob Painter confirmed Monday at the company's Insight 2026 conference in San Diego.

Painter offered no timetable and no signal that a sale has grown more likely. Asked whether the review could also produce a spinoff, he said its purpose is to determine what serves customers, employees and shareholders best.

"There is no update," Painter told reporters at an executive media roundtable. "Most strategic reviews end up with continuing to do what we do."

Trimble (Nasdaq: TRMB) disclosed in August that it had received credible, unsolicited interest from multiple parties and launched the review with financial adviser Goldman Sachs. Asked Monday whether interest from multiple parties still exists, Painter answered: "Yes to everything you said."

For carriers, brokers and shippers running Trimble TMS platforms, the message was one of continuity. Painter said Trimble operates the business as usual and stressed he is "super, super … comfortable to be the ongoing owner of the business."

A 'scarce asset'

Painter framed the transportation unit as a scarce asset with a distinctive network and technology portfolio, and said Trimble's status as a public company obliges it to hear out credible approaches.

"It's not surprising to me that we've had inbound interest," Painter said. "It's a scarce asset, a scarce set of capabilities. We're a public company. We have a fiduciary obligation to the shareholders to listen if we have credible interest."

Trimble has not indicated when the review will conclude. "We hope to wrap up the review," Painter said. "I'm super comfortable if I'm back in front of you again in weeks, months, or a year from now at our next conference and we're executing the playbook because that's how we're operating right now."

He also left open the possibility that the review could result in the transportation business becoming a separate company, but declined to speculate about Trimble's residual exposure to trucking if the unit were sold.

"My view is this is a Trimble business and let's say until it's not, if that's the case," Painter said. "This business is a terrific business with an exciting future providing real value and unique value."

AI without the rip-and-replace

The conference itself demonstrated that Trimble continues investing in the transportation segment while the review runs. The company unveiled technologies centered on voice AI, route and trailer orchestration, automated maintenance and transportation management systems designed to support AI agents.

Michael Kornhauser, who leads Trimble's transportation operations in North America and its applications business, said the modernization strategy lets existing customers adopt AI without expensive, disruptive replacements of longstanding TMS platforms. The latest TMS release provides an updated experience built to support AI while fleets keep existing systems and integrations.

"We felt that that was the quickest way to get our customers in their existing systems to a place where AI can impact their business today," Kornhauser said. "For now, there's not a big lift. There's not a big risk."

The approach matters commercially for fleets that have accumulated technology and integrations over decades: they gain AI capabilities without immediately disconnecting entrenched systems.

Executives also highlighted Arc Agent, which Trimble is developing around a single AI agent that acquires multiple skills rather than deploying separate agents for individual tasks. Philipp Pfister, vice president of Transporeon — a Trimble company — described Arc Agent as functioning somewhat like another employee: users teach it a task, verify its work and gradually grant it greater responsibility as trust develops.

The goal is for Arc Agent to operate across freight processes from procurement and execution to settlement, spanning shippers, carriers, brokers and other participants. Customers will also be able to create skills tailored to their own operations rather than relying exclusively on predefined applications.

Kornhauser cited one example involving currency conversion for TMT Trucking. A capability that traditionally might have required a three- to six-month proof of concept, custom coding and professional services was built in Arc in roughly 35 minutes.

"You don't have to have an engineering degree to build a skill," Pfister said.

Security questions

Painter acknowledged that autonomous AI raises questions about governance, cybersecurity and protection of proprietary information. Customers can connect Trimble and non-Trimble data, he said, but businesses experimenting with AI quickly confront questions about controlling access and preventing sensitive data from leaving their organizations.

"Pretty quickly, you go from, wow, this is pretty cool to wait a minute, how are we going to govern this?" Painter said. He noted Trimble spends "tens and tens of millions of dollars every year" on cyber resilience.

Pfister said Arc Agent incorporates a human-in-the-loop model in which users approve actions and provide feedback, while the system maintains a reviewable trail of actions. "The data of our customers is like the number one priority that we have," Pfister said. "We need to protect the data of our customers at any point in time."

Mexico in focus

Trimble is also expanding technology for increasingly complex U.S.-Mexico freight movements. Kornhauser pointed first to Trimble's mapping and routing capabilities. "We're doing a lot to enhance our Mexico Maps data," he said.

Trimble has roughly 6 million mapped places in North America and is adding locations in Mexico, particularly truck-relevant points tied to cross-border movements. Improved mapping can give carriers greater visibility into cross-border shipments, with Trimble's TMS products supporting those flows as well.

"We see the same thing — there's an increased volume, there's a lot of complexity," Kornhauser said.

The Mexico investments underscore the scale of the transportation technology operation Trimble is weighing whether to retain, spin off or sell. Executives said they continue to invest in the business, including integrating capabilities from Transporeon, acquired in 2023. Painter called that acquisition a strategic success that gives Trimble a platform connecting participants and processes across freight transportation.

"We think it's got a bright future ahead of it," Painter said.

With no decision announced and no deadline disclosed, the review's outcome — sale, spinoff or status quo — could surface at any point between weeks and a year from now, while Trimble keeps shipping AI tools into the freight network in the meantime.