Caterpillar’s record quarter ran on data-center power as it budgets $100 million to retrain 118,000 workers
Caterpillar’s second-quarter revenue reached an all-time high of $20.5 billion, helped by power-generation equipment used in data centers. Sales in that division spiked 72 percent to $3.10 billion. The company plans to spend $100 million over the next five years training 118,000 employees in AI, autonomy, and robotics.
Kate Park at TechCrunch spoke with Caterpillar CTO Jaime Mineart on the sidelines of the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. CEO Joe Creed said “no one is slowing down” on demand for cloud computing and generative AI infrastructure.
What printed is the kit that keeps someone else’s computer room running. Generators and related power equipment sit next to other companies’ GPUs.
Mining was the start, Mineart told TechCrunch, because labor shortages and hazardous conditions made automation useful. Today Caterpillar sells automated haul trucks, drilling, underground loaders, dozers, and remote-controlled construction equipment, plus a software command center, fleet management, and remote terrain intelligence.
Mineart said, “Now we’re in this super exciting time where we can take all of that learning from mining and bring it into much more dynamic environments, jobsites, quarries, and construction sites.”
A field technician next to a machine uses voice commands to pull up repair procedures, troubleshoot, and identify parts. Mineart said customers, operators, and technicians use it now. It draws on proprietary data from about 1.6 million connected assets globally and more than 16 petabytes of structured data.
The company is also using AI to scan sites and generate digital twins in manufacturing, and AI agents “to modernize legacy code, generate and test new software, and identify defects earlier.”
Mineart said the hard part about autonomy and physical AI is “incorporating that technology into the customer jobsite and into the workflows.” Some operators may shift from controlling a single machine to overseeing multiple machines from a remote command center.
I trust the generator line more than the haul-truck demo.
The truck is still the photo.