Verified
Caterpillar
Piloting- Industrials
- ~118,000 employees
- Helios and Cat AI Assistant, built in-house
- 827 autonomous trucks (2025)
- NVIDIA edge AI
Caterpillar deploys AI mostly in what it sells: Cat AI Assistant, a group of AI agents launched in early 2026 on its in-house Helios data platform, autonomous haul trucks, and AI-generated service leads that produced $1.1 billion of closed sales in 2024. Inside the company, Caterpillar uses AI agents on legacy code, an employee data assistant and factory quality checks, and trains physical AI models on CoreWeave. Group President Bob De Lange oversees Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic and CTO Jaime Mineart; Caterpillar has no AI chief.
caterpillar.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- Helios, the cloud data platform Caterpillar built in-house about 2020 and runs mostly on AWS services, holds more than 16 petabytes and carries Cat AI Assistant, a group of AI agents Caterpillar launched for customers, dealers and technicians in early 2026.
- The models
- Caterpillar has not named the model behind the off-board Cat AI Assistant; in its CES 2026 demo the in-cab version ran the Qwen3 4B model and NVIDIA speech models on an NVIDIA Jetson Thor computer on the machine, and Caterpillar trains NVIDIA-based physical AI models on CoreWeave (Sep 2026).
- The reach
- Caterpillar has not said how many of its about 118,000 employees use AI tools; employees can query company data through an internal data assistant, and CTO Jaime Mineart said in Aug 2026 that customers, operators and technicians use Cat AI Assistant.
- The catch
- Caterpillar has published one AI-linked return, from its condition monitoring service leads, and gives no figure for AI spending inside the digital and technology investment it plans to grow 2.5 times through 2030.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~118,000
- Full-time at Dec 31, 2025, about 66,400 of them outside the U.S. (2025 Form 10-K)
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- R&D expense $2.148B in 2025; digital and technology spend to grow 2.5x through 2030
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- Cat Digital runs an office in Chicago (2026 proxy); no AI staff count published
- Who owns AI
- Ogi Redzic, Chief Digital Officer
- Runs Cat Digital, including analytics and AI; with CTO Jaime Mineart, under Group President Bob De Lange since mid-2025
- Platform
- Helios, built in-house
- Cloud-native data platform built about 2020, mostly on AWS; Cat AI Assistant runs on it
- Models
- Qwen3 4B, NVIDIA speech models
- In the cab on NVIDIA Jetson Thor in the Jan 2026 demo; off-board models not disclosed
- Reach
- Customers, dealers, technicians
- Employee use of AI tools not disclosed
- Use cases
- No count published
- Service leads, autonomy, Cat AI Assistant, code agents, translation, factory inspection
Key findings
Caterpillar reported $1.1 billion of closed-won sales in 2024 from condition monitoring prioritized service events, leads that its AI engine builds from 30 data sources in Helios and sends into dealers' CRM systems, after having almost none in 2021 (Investor Day, Nov 2025).
Caterpillar introduced Cat AI Assistant, a group of AI agents on its Helios data platform, on Jan 6, 2026, and said in Mar 2026 that the assistant was available off the machine while the in-cab version was a prototype; in the CES demo the in-cab assistant ran the Qwen3 4B model and NVIDIA speech models on an NVIDIA Jetson Thor computer with no cloud link.
Caterpillar ended 2025 with 827 autonomous haul trucks in operation, up from 690 a year earlier, aims to triple the 2024 count by 2030, and said in Sep 2026 that it will run autonomous Cat 775 trucks, its first autonomy on that model, at two more Luck Stone quarries in Virginia.
Caterpillar runs Helios mostly on AWS services, its Cat Digital team told AWS re:Invent in Dec 2025, organizes Helios data with Snowflake, and trains its NVIDIA-based physical AI models on CoreWeave, Constellation Research reported in Sep 2026; Caterpillar does not break out what AI costs.
Caterpillar has no dedicated AI chief: Joe Creed said Caterpillar moved its CTO and its Chief Digital Officer under Group President Bob De Lange in mid-2025, and Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic, who runs analytics and AI in Cat Digital, sits on Caterpillar's Gen AI governance board (Assurant proxy, Apr 2026).
Where Caterpillar sits
- Stage
- Piloting
Caterpillar sits at Piloting: AI runs in production in a handful of named places, led by condition monitoring service leads that produced $1.1 billion of closed sales in 2024, autonomous haul trucks, Cat AI Assistant, launched to customers in early 2026, and an internal data assistant for employees, under Group President Bob De Lange, who oversees Cat Digital and Cat Technology. Caterpillar falls short of Scaling because it has announced no AI tool open to most of its about 118,000 employees, publishes no use-case count or employee usage figure, and its factory digital twins, in-cab assistant and FieldAI robotics work were still pilots or early applications in 2026.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- Group President Bob De Lange, over Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic and CTO Jaime Mineart; no dedicated AI chief
- Platform
- Built: Helios data platform and Cat AI Assistant, built in-house
- Models
- Qwen3 4B and NVIDIA speech models in the in-cab demo; NVIDIA-based physical AI models; off-board models not disclosed
- Hosting
- Helios mostly on AWS, with Snowflake for enterprise data and Microsoft as cloud partner; physical AI training on CoreWeave; in-cab models on NVIDIA Jetson Thor
- Reach
- Customers, dealers and technicians; employee use not disclosed
How they deploy
AI in the product first
Caterpillar's strategy, refreshed at its Nov 2025 Investor Day, rests on three growth pillars: commercial excellence, being the advanced technology leader, and changing how the company works. Bob De Lange told investors that digital and technology are moving from enablers to key sources of Caterpillar's competitive differentiation, and Caterpillar's AI work is aimed mostly at customers: AI service leads, Cat AI Assistant, operator assist features and autonomous machines.
Data platform before models
Caterpillar built Helios, its cloud data platform, about 2020 so every application draws on one set of trusted data, Ogi Redzic said in Mar 2025, and he credited that consolidated data for Caterpillar's position to offer AI services. Helios ingests more than 50 billion records a month from 30 data sources (Nov 2025), and Redzic described Helios in Jan 2026 as the foundation that lets Caterpillar deploy new AI capabilities quickly.
Edge and physical AI with NVIDIA
Caterpillar expanded its collaboration with NVIDIA at CES 2026 to cover on-board AI features, AI agents and production systems. Caterpillar runs speech recognition, AI models and control logic on NVIDIA Jetson Thor on the machine so the assistant works at remote sites without a cloud connection, pilots NVIDIA Omniverse factory digital twins, and plans to use NVIDIA AI Factory infrastructure for forecasting and scheduling. Brandon Hootman said in Sep 2026 that Caterpillar works closely with NVIDIA to adapt its models to Caterpillar machines and job sites, and Caterpillar trains those models on CoreWeave.
AI inside Caterpillar
Joe Creed said at CES 2026 that Caterpillar will use AI in its own processes, to optimize its factories, and to design and test with digital twins before it cuts steel, and the 2025 annual report says Caterpillar is deploying AI and advanced analytics across the enterprise. Caterpillar's named internal uses are AI agents for legacy code and software testing, an employee data assistant built on Snowflake, AI translation of manuals and factory quality inspection; Caterpillar IT under CIO Jamie Engstrom set up an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence and a GenAI community of practice by Apr 2024.
Buying and partnering for mining and job sites
Caterpillar completed the acquisition of mining software maker RPMGlobal in Feb 2026 and of Skycatch, whose spatial data comes with a suite of AI capabilities, in Jul 2026, both inside Resource Industries, which Joe Creed described as investment in technology-enabled growth. Caterpillar announced a collaboration with FieldAI on physical AI, autonomy and robotics for job sites and factories in Sep 2026.
Training people for AI-enabled work
Caterpillar pledged $100 million over five years for workforce training and education on its centennial in Apr 2025, and at CES 2026 committed $25 million of it to a global prize for solutions that teach workers digital and autonomous skills. Joe Creed said in Jan 2026 that people, not machines, will stay at the center of Caterpillar's work as new roles emerge.
- Deployment model
- Caterpillar runs AI through two units in Group President Bob De Lange's Digital, Technology & Distribution group: Cat Digital, led by Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic, with responsibility for connectivity, the enterprise data platform, analytics and AI, equipment management, eCommerce and aftermarket leads, and Cat Technology under CTO Jaime Mineart, which builds on-machine technology, autonomy and robotics. Joe Creed said in Nov 2025 that Caterpillar moved both teams under De Lange that summer, and Caterpillar's 2025 annual report says further integration of Cat Digital and Cat Technology sped up connected, AI-enabled and autonomous solutions. Caterpillar IT, under CIO Jamie Engstrom, runs internal AI work such as the employee data assistant. Caterpillar's 2025 Form 10-K places digital investments and, since Jul 2025, research and development for automation, electronics and software in its All Other segment. Independent Cat dealers receive AI-generated service leads in their own CRM systems and sell the resulting parts and repairs.
- Model providers
- Caterpillar has not named the large language model behind the off-board Cat AI Assistant, which Ogi Redzic described in Jan 2026 as a group of AI agents built with Helios on the latest AI technology. NVIDIA's account of Caterpillar's CES 2026 in-cab demo says the assistant ran the Qwen3 4B model, served locally with vLLM, and NVIDIA Riva with Nemotron speech models for speech recognition and voice. Caterpillar's Q4 2024 call described the service lead tool as an internal generative AI solution launched in 2024, without naming its model. Caterpillar trains NVIDIA-based physical AI models for autonomy on CoreWeave, and Brandon Hootman said in Sep 2026 that Caterpillar generates about 1,000 hours of synthetic simulation data for every hour of real data it collects. AWS reported in Jan 2026 that a precision construction system on Helios uses more than 23,000 machine learning models, and FieldAI brings its own robot foundation models to the collaboration announced in Sep 2026.
- Data and infrastructure
- Helios is Caterpillar's cloud-native, event-driven data platform; in Jan 2026 it held more than 16 petabytes from about 1.5 million connected assets, and Caterpillar reported more than 1.6 million connected and reporting assets at the end of 2025. Caterpillar's Cat Digital architects told AWS re:Invent in Dec 2025 that Helios is built mostly on AWS services such as S3, ECS and DynamoDB. Bob De Lange said in Nov 2025 that Microsoft is Caterpillar's long-standing partner for cloud and productivity and that Snowflake organizes Helios data, and Constellation Research wrote in Jan 2026 that Caterpillar's cloud stack runs on Microsoft, an account the AWS session contradicts for Helios. Caterpillar trains its NVIDIA-based physical AI models on CoreWeave's GPU cloud, and CoreWeave's chief executive said in Sep 2026 that CoreWeave uses NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems for Caterpillar's physical AI training and inference. In-cab AI runs on NVIDIA Jetson Thor on the machine; Caterpillar has not said where Cat AI Assistant's off-board agents or its NVIDIA AI Factory infrastructure run. Ogi Redzic said in Mar 2025 that Helios also takes in data from other manufacturers' equipment with customer consent and serves more than 800 million API calls a month.
Platforms and internal tools
HeliosAbout 2020
Helios is Caterpillar's in-house, cloud-native and event-driven data platform, built mostly on AWS services, which brings together data from connected machines, inspections, dealers, customers, work orders, invoices and engineering models. Helios handles thousands of messages a second, triggers millions of data pipelines a day, and underpins Cat AI Assistant and the condition monitoring service leads; Snowflake organizes its data.
- Users
- Caterpillar applications, dealers and customers; more than 800 million API calls a month (Mar 2025)
Cat AI AssistantQ1 2026
Cat AI Assistant is a multimodal group of AI agents on Helios, presented as one assistant, that sees the state of a customer's fleet, flags machines needing attention, recommends parts and walks technicians through repairs, and can take actions through Caterpillar's applications and APIs. Caterpillar introduced Cat AI Assistant on Jan 6, 2026 and planned the off-board launch for the first quarter, said at CONEXPO in Mar 2026 that it was available off the machine in existing Cat apps, and showed the in-cab version there as a prototype.
- Users
- Customers, dealers, technicians and operators
- Models
- Qwen3 4B and NVIDIA Riva with Nemotron speech models in the in-cab demo; off-board models not disclosed
Condition monitoring prioritized service eventsGenerative AI tool launched 2024
Prioritized service events are service leads that Caterpillar's AI tools build from connected-asset data, fluid sampling, inspections, engineering recommendations and dealer work orders, then send into dealers' CRM systems so dealers can fix machines before they fail. Caterpillar launched an internal generative AI solution in 2024 to cut the time and effort needed to write the recommendations.
Employee data assistantBy Jun 2026
Caterpillar's employee data assistant answers staff questions from a curated, trusted copy of enterprise data held in Snowflake, built by Caterpillar IT under CIO Jamie Engstrom. Snowflake named Caterpillar its 2026 AI Innovator for the Americas, an award for a production AI use case with clear business impact, and Caterpillar tied the award to the data assistant.
- Users
- Employees; number not disclosed
Autonomous haulage
Caterpillar's autonomous haulage solution runs mining and quarry trucks without operators, including mixed fleets with other manufacturers' trucks, and is expanding from large mining trucks to the 100-ton class and, from Sep 2026, the Cat 775. Caterpillar's autonomous fleet had moved more than 11 billion tons and driven more than 385 million kilometers by Jan 2026 with no reported injuries.
- Users
- 827 trucks in operation at the end of 2025
Factory digital twinsOct 2025
Caterpillar is piloting factory digital twins built on NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD at several U.S. sites that make building and construction products and large mining machines. Joe Creed said the first, announced by NVIDIA in Oct 2025, covers a line at Caterpillar's large mining truck plant in Decatur. Teams use the twins to simulate line changes, scheduling and material flow before retooling.
Vendors and partners
NVIDIABy Oct 2025
Edge AI computers, speech models, digital twin software and AI Factory infrastructure · Joe Creed cited plans to deploy NVIDIA Jetson Thor on Caterpillar machines at the Nov 2025 Investor Day, and the two companies expanded the collaboration at CES 2026 to on-board AI, AI agents and production systems.
Amazon Web ServicesBy Dec 2025
Cloud services that Helios is mostly built on · Caterpillar's Cat Digital architects presented Helios at AWS re:Invent in Dec 2025, naming S3, ECS and DynamoDB among the services it runs on.
CoreWeaveBy Sep 2026
GPU cloud for training Caterpillar's NVIDIA-based physical AI models · Constellation Research reported in Sep 2026 that Caterpillar trains its NVIDIA-based models on CoreWeave, whose chief executive said CoreWeave supports Caterpillar's physical AI training and inference.
Microsoft
Cloud and productivity partner · Bob De Lange called Microsoft a long-standing partner for everything related to cloud and productivity (Nov 2025); Caterpillar has not named the Microsoft services it uses.
SnowflakeBy Nov 2025
Organizes the data in Helios and holds the enterprise data behind the employee data assistant · Snowflake named Caterpillar its 2026 AI Innovator for the Americas in Jun 2026.
FieldAISep 2026
Physical AI, autonomy and robotics collaboration for job sites and factories · Caterpillar listed autonomous inspections, digital twins, situational awareness and operational optimization as early applications.
Carnegie Mellon University1980s
Autonomy research partner · Caterpillar's work with Carnegie Mellon on software, GPS and perception led to its first autonomous truck tests, Jaime Mineart said in Jan 2026.
Luck StoneNov 2024
Quarry autonomy partner · Luck Stone's Bull Run quarry has run autonomous Cat trucks since Nov 2024, hauling more than 3.5 million tons by Sep 2026, and the two companies announced in Sep 2026 that autonomous Cat 775 trucks will run at Luck Stone's Boscobel and Bealeton operations.
RPMGlobalFeb 2026
Mining software company acquired by Caterpillar
SkycatchJul 2026
Spatial data and AI company acquired by Caterpillar
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
Cat Digital and Cat Technology under one group president; AI products sold through the segments and independent dealers
Caterpillar has no Chief AI Officer. Its Executive Office is the CEO, four Group Presidents, the CFO, the Chief Legal Officer and the Chief Human Resources Officer (2025 Form 10-K). Joe Creed said in Nov 2025 that Caterpillar had moved its CTO and Chief Digital Officer and their teams under Group President Bob De Lange that summer, and Caterpillar lists De Lange's group as Digital, Technology & Distribution, covering Cat Digital, Cat Technology, the distribution divisions and Product Support & Logistics. Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic leads Cat Digital, which covers the enterprise data platform, analytics and AI, and CTO Jaime Mineart leads Cat Technology.
Caterpillar has not disclosed how many people work on AI, data or digital products. Caterpillar IT, led by CIO Jamie Engstrom, has more than 2,200 people in 28 countries (Fast Company, 2026), and Observer reported in Jul 2026 that engineers, data scientists and product developers in Cat Digital grew 500% under Ogi Redzic, without giving a count. Cat Digital has an office in Chicago that Caterpillar's directors visited to review digital strategy (2026 proxy), and Redzic said in Jan 2026 that Caterpillar's digital teams write the code and build the applications that go with its machines. Caterpillar moved research and development for automation, electronics and software out of Resource Industries in Jul 2025, and its total R&D expense was $2.148 billion in 2025 (2025 Form 10-K).
Reporting lines
Chairman and CEO
Digital, Technology and Distribution
Bob De Lange, Group President
Cat Digital
Ogi Redzic, Chief Digital Officer
Connectivity, Helios, analytics and AI, eCommerce and aftermarket leads
Cat Technology
Jaime Mineart, Chief Technology Officer
Technology development and integration across Caterpillar products, including R&D, autonomy, robotics and physical AI
Chief Financial Officer
Also leads Financial Products and Corporate Services (2025 Form 10-K)
Construction Industries
Rod Shurman, Group President
Construction machines, including most of the types Caterpillar previewed as autonomous in Jan 2026
Resource Industries
Derrick York, Group President, from Nov 1, 2026
Sells autonomy, fleet management and mining technology; owns RPMGlobal and Skycatch
Caterpillar IT
Jamie Engstrom, Chief Information Officer
Runs global IT, cybersecurity and internal AI tools such as the employee data assistant, and briefs the Audit Committee every two months; reporting line not published
Caterpillar publishes no AI org chart. The 2025 Form 10-K says one Group President leads a smaller operating segment inside the All Other segment, which holds digital investments and, since Jul 1, 2025, research and development for automation, electronics and software. Caterpillar has not said whom the Chief Information Officer reports to, which unit Brandon Hootman's physical AI platforms team sits in, or who chairs its Gen AI governance board.
Named people
Use cases
Caterpillar has not published a count of its AI use cases; the public record names about a dozen, most of them sold to customers through its machines, digital tools and dealers. Caterpillar has reported a business return for one, condition monitoring prioritized service events, the AI-generated service leads it sends to dealers. Caterpillar reports no firm-level return on AI and ties its digital and technology work in general to a goal of $30 billion in services revenue by 2030, up from $24 billion in 2025.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condition monitoring prioritized service events Caterpillar's AI engine combines connected-asset data, fluid samples, inspections, work orders and engineering models from 30 data sources in Helios to predict equipment issues and sends prioritized service leads into dealers' CRM systems; a turbocharger digital twin had produced 2,500 of the leads by Nov 2025. | Services and dealers | In production | $1.1B closed-won sales in 2024 from leads its AI engine generates (Nov 2025) |
| Cat AI Assistant Cat AI Assistant flags machines that need attention, answers maintenance and parts questions in Cat apps such as VisionLink, and walks technicians through repairs; Caterpillar planned the off-board launch for the first quarter of 2026 and said in Mar 2026 that it was available. | Customers and dealers | In production | |
| In-cab Cat AI Assistant The in-cab Cat AI Assistant answers operators' how-to questions, sets safety limits such as height ceilings by voice, and offers productivity tips, running on an NVIDIA Jetson Thor computer on the machine; in-cab applications were in final validation in Jan 2026 and shown as a prototype in Mar 2026. | Machines | Pilot | |
| Autonomous haulage in mines and quarries Caterpillar had 827 autonomous haul trucks running at the end of 2025; Luck Stone's Bull Run quarry has run driverless trucks since Nov 2024, and autonomous Cat 775 trucks are coming to two more Luck Stone quarries (Sep 2026). | Resource Industries | In production | |
| Autonomous construction machines Caterpillar previewed five autonomous construction machines at CES 2026, a wheel loader, a dozer, a haul truck, an excavator and a compactor, with work planned on construction sites in South Korea and a landfill collaboration with WM. | Construction Industries | Announced | |
| AI agents for legacy code and testing Caterpillar uses AI agents to modernize legacy code, generate and test new software and find defects earlier, CTO Jaime Mineart said in Aug 2026. | Software engineering | In production | |
| AI translation of manuals and inspections Caterpillar uses AI to translate the manuals it needs for the more than 160 countries where it does business, and adds AI-generated translations to Cat Inspect inspection reports so engineers anywhere can read them; Bob De Lange said in Mar 2025 that AI translation is cheaper, faster and better, without giving figures. | Service documentation | In production | |
| Visual quality inspection Caterpillar uses AI visual pattern recognition for quality control in its factories, and Bob De Lange said in Mar 2025 that teams find new factory AI applications every month. | Manufacturing | In production | |
| Factory digital twins Caterpillar is piloting NVIDIA Omniverse digital twins of several U.S. factories, starting with a large mining truck line in Decatur, to test line changes, scheduling and material flow before retooling. | Manufacturing | Pilot | |
| Forecasting, scheduling and production planning Caterpillar said at CES 2026 that it will apply AI on NVIDIA AI Factory infrastructure to manufacturing and supply chain forecasting, scheduling and production planning. | Manufacturing and supply chain | Announced | |
| Skycatch spatial data Skycatch, which Caterpillar acquired in Jul 2026, captures high-precision, large-scale spatial data for mining customers and pairs it with AI tools so customers can identify, measure and interact with the data. | Resource Industries | In production |
Adoption
Caterpillar spread AI from the machine outward: autonomous haulage grew out of research with Carnegie Mellon that began in the 1980s, Helios gathered machine and dealer data from about 2020, AI-generated service leads went from almost none in 2021 to $1.1 billion of closed-won sales in 2024, and Cat AI Assistant launched for customers, dealers and technicians in early 2026. Caterpillar's reach figures are about machines rather than people: more than 1.6 million connected assets and 827 autonomous trucks at the end of 2025. Inside the company, Caterpillar IT set up a GenAI community of practice by Apr 2024 and later an employee data assistant on Snowflake, but Caterpillar has published no figure for how many of its about 118,000 employees use AI tools; its other named internal uses are coding agents, translation and factory inspection.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
1980s
Caterpillar began autonomy work with Carnegie Mellon on software, GPS and perception, which led to its first autonomous truck tests.
About 2020
Caterpillar built Helios, a cloud data platform that gives every application one set of trusted machine, dealer and customer data.
2024
Caterpillar launched an internal generative AI solution to create prioritized service events, the service leads it sends to dealers.
Apr 2024
Caterpillar said CIO Jamie Engstrom's team had set up an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence and a GenAI community of practice where employees take part in AI use cases, and that its developers use generative AI to search proprietary information.
Nov 2024
Luck Stone's Bull Run quarry in Virginia went live with driverless Cat trucks, extending Caterpillar's autonomy from mines into quarries.
Summer 2025
Caterpillar moved its CTO and Chief Digital Officer and their teams under Group President Bob De Lange, Joe Creed told investors.
Mar 2025
Bob De Lange said Caterpillar uses AI to translate manuals and for visual quality control in its factories, and Ogi Redzic said Caterpillar had used AI with customers and dealers for about four years.
Apr 2025
Caterpillar pledged $100 million for workforce training and education on its centennial day.
Oct 2025
NVIDIA announced Caterpillar's first factory digital twin, of a line at its large mining truck plant in Decatur.
Nov 2025
Caterpillar set 2030 targets of 2 million connected assets, double the closed-won sales from condition monitoring leads and triple the 2024 count of autonomous trucks, and planned 2.5 times more digital and technology investment.
Dec 2025
Caterpillar presented Helios at AWS re:Invent as a platform built on AWS, with a precision construction system that uses more than 23,000 machine learning models.
Jan 2026
Caterpillar introduced Cat AI Assistant, planned the off-board rollout for the first quarter, and said in-cab applications were in final validation.
Mar 2026
Caterpillar said Cat AI Assistant was available off the machine in its existing apps and showed an in-cab prototype at CONEXPO-CON/AGG.
Jun 2026
Caterpillar won Snowflake's 2026 AI Innovator award for the Americas for its employee data assistant built on enterprise data in Snowflake.
Aug 2026
Jaime Mineart said Caterpillar uses AI agents to modernize legacy code, generate and test software and find defects earlier, and that customers, operators and technicians use Cat AI Assistant.
Sep 2026
Caterpillar began a physical AI and robotics collaboration with FieldAI and was reported to be training its NVIDIA-based physical AI models on CoreWeave.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology budget
Caterpillar does not publish a technology budget. Caterpillar's research and development expense was $2.148 billion in 2025, against $2.107 billion in 2024 (2025 Form 10-K), and the company said in May 2025 that it had invested more than $30 billion in R&D over 20 years. Caterpillar plans to grow digital and technology investment 2.5 times in the five years to 2030 against the previous five, with part of the spend in SG&A and part in R&D (Investor Day, Nov 2025), and said on Oct 29, 2026 that higher digital and technology spending raised SG&A and R&D in Construction Industries.
What AI itself costs
Caterpillar has not disclosed what it spends on AI models, compute or AI staff, or what share of the 2.5 times digital and technology increase goes to AI. Caterpillar trains its physical AI models on CoreWeave's GPU cloud and runs its in-cab assistant on NVIDIA Jetson Thor computers on the machine, so part of the cost of AI inference sits in the equipment Caterpillar sells; Caterpillar has not published the cost of either.
Reported ROI
Caterpillar's only AI-linked business return is $1.1 billion of closed-won sales in 2024 from condition monitoring prioritized service events, the AI-generated service leads it sends to dealers, reported at the Nov 2025 Investor Day with a target to double that figure by 2030. Bob De Lange also said a new turbocharger digital twin had produced 2,500 leads, an incremental $7 million sales opportunity, which is an estimate of potential sales rather than a result. Caterpillar ties its digital and technology initiatives in general to services revenue, which reached $24 billion in 2025 against a goal of $30 billion by 2030, without crediting a share to AI.
Productivity and safety markers
Caterpillar's autonomy figures measure customers' operations rather than Caterpillar's own costs: its autonomous fleet had moved more than 11 billion tons and driven more than 385 million kilometers by Jan 2026 with no reported injuries, and Luck Stone's Bull Run quarry had hauled more than 3.5 million tons autonomously by Sep 2026. Caterpillar has published no productivity figure for its internal coding agents, data assistant, translation or factory inspection.
Headcount
Caterpillar employed about 118,000 full-time people at Dec 31, 2025, about 51,600 of them in the U.S. (2025 Form 10-K). Caterpillar has not linked any headcount change to AI; Joe Creed said at CES 2026 that people will stay at the center of its work as new roles emerge, and TechCrunch reported in Aug 2026 that some operators may move from running one machine to overseeing several from a remote command center.
Governance and risk
Gen AI governance board
Caterpillar has an internal Gen AI governance board, on which Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic serves, according to Assurant's Apr 2026 proxy, which also credits Redzic with expertise in AI governance and in bringing agentic AI products to market. Caterpillar has not published the board's membership, charter or approval rules.
Board oversight
Caterpillar's directors received presentations on artificial intelligence and on technology and digital since the 2025 annual meeting, and visited the Cat Digital office in Chicago to review progress on digital strategy (2026 proxy). Caterpillar's Audit Committee oversees enterprise risk management and information security, and the board's skills matrix, which lists 90% of directors with technology expertise, includes the integration of AI and machine learning.
Cybersecurity
Caterpillar's Chief Information Officer, Jamie Engstrom, in the role since Sep 2020, oversees cybersecurity across corporate IT, operational technology and customer-facing products and briefs the Audit Committee at every bimonthly meeting (2025 Form 10-K). Caterpillar bases its controls on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISO 27001, and its employee awareness program covers risks from emerging technologies.
Data on the machine and customer consent
Caterpillar's in-cab assistant runs its models on the machine, which Caterpillar says gives operators private AI support without depending on a cloud connection (Jan 2026). Ogi Redzic said in Mar 2025 that Helios takes in data from other manufacturers' machines only with customer consent.
Disclosed risks
Caterpillar's 2025 Form 10-K mentions artificial intelligence only as a driver of data center demand for its power generation products and carries no AI-specific risk factor. Its information security risk factor warns that attacks could target the security, integrity or reliability of hardware and software installed in Caterpillar products.
Recent signals
Oct 29, 2026
Caterpillar said on its Q3 2026 call that SG&A and R&D for digital and technology investments rose from a year earlier in Construction Industries and expected them to be higher than a year earlier in the fourth quarter too.
Oct 15, 2026
Caterpillar named Solar Turbines president Derrick York Group President of Resource Industries, the segment that sells its mining autonomy, from Nov 1, 2026; Denise Johnson becomes an adviser and retires on Feb 1, 2027.
Sep 30, 2026
Brandon Hootman, Caterpillar's vice president of physical AI platforms and construction autonomy, said at CoreWeave's Fully Connected conference that Caterpillar adapts NVIDIA models to its machines, and Constellation Research reported that Caterpillar trains those models on CoreWeave.
Sep 15, 2026
Caterpillar and Luck Stone said they will extend autonomous hauling to Luck Stone's Boscobel and Bealeton operations in Virginia, Caterpillar's first autonomy on the Cat 775 truck, after Bull Run hauled more than 3.5 million tons autonomously.
Sep 10, 2026
Joe Creed said Caterpillar's digital teams and Cat AI Assistant are working with its on-machine technology teams to make features such as Dig Assist, Swing Assist and Cat Command easier for operators to use.
Sep 2, 2026
Caterpillar announced a collaboration with FieldAI on physical AI, autonomy and robotics for job sites and factories, with early applications in autonomous inspections, digital twins, situational awareness and operational optimization.
Aug 30, 2026
TechCrunch reported that CTO Jaime Mineart said Caterpillar uses AI agents to modernize legacy code, generate and test software and find defects earlier, and that Caterpillar plans $100 million over five years to train staff in AI, autonomy and robotics.
Jul 2026
Caterpillar acquired Skycatch, whose spatial data and AI tools build near-real-time digital twins of mine sites, and plans to feed that data into its RPM and MineStar software.
Jun 1, 2026
Snowflake named Caterpillar its 2026 AI Innovator for the Americas, an award for organizations running a production AI use case with clear business impact.
Apr 30, 2026
Caterpillar's 2025 annual report said the company is deploying AI and advanced analytics across the enterprise and had recently launched Cat AI Assistant, and that closer integration of Cat Digital and Cat Technology sped up AI-enabled and autonomous solutions.
Mar 5, 2026
Caterpillar executives said at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026 that customers can ask Cat AI Assistant in VisionLink how to service a machine and get the instructions with links to the parts they need.
Jan 29, 2026
Caterpillar reported 827 autonomous haul trucks in operation at the end of 2025, up from 690, more than 1.6 million connected assets, and higher digital and technology spending planned for 2026.
Jan 7, 2026
Caterpillar's CES keynote expanded its NVIDIA collaboration to on-board AI, AI agents and production systems, previewed five autonomous construction machines and committed $25 million to a workforce innovation prize.
Jan 6, 2026
Caterpillar introduced Cat AI Assistant, planned to put the off-board version live in the first quarter of 2026, and said in-cab applications were in the final stages of validation.
Nov 4, 2025
Caterpillar's Investor Day reported $1.1 billion of 2024 closed-won sales from condition monitoring service leads, named NVIDIA, Microsoft and Snowflake as technology partners, set a 2.5 times increase in digital and technology investment, and said Cat Digital and Cat Technology now sit under one group president.
Quick answers
- How does Caterpillar deploy AI?
- Caterpillar deploys AI mostly in what it sells: Cat AI Assistant, a group of AI agents launched in early 2026 on its in-house Helios data platform, autonomous haul trucks, and AI-generated service leads that produced $1.1 billion of closed sales in 2024. Inside the company, Caterpillar uses AI agents on legacy code, an employee data assistant and factory quality checks, and trains physical AI models on CoreWeave. Group President Bob De Lange oversees Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic and CTO Jaime Mineart; Caterpillar has no AI chief.
- What does Caterpillar use AI for?
- Caterpillar has not published a count of its AI use cases; the public record names about a dozen, most of them sold to customers through its machines, digital tools and dealers. Caterpillar has reported a business return for one, condition monitoring prioritized service events, the AI-generated service leads it sends to dealers. Caterpillar reports no firm-level return on AI and ties its digital and technology work in general to a goal of $30 billion in services revenue by 2030, up from $24 billion in 2025.
- Who leads AI at Caterpillar?
- AI at Caterpillar is led by Ogi Redzic (Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President); Jaime Mineart (Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer); Jamie Engstrom (Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer). Ownership of AI on the org chart: Group President Bob De Lange, over Chief Digital Officer Ogi Redzic and CTO Jaime Mineart; no dedicated AI chief.
- What AI platform does Caterpillar use?
- Helios, the cloud data platform Caterpillar built in-house about 2020 and runs mostly on AWS services, holds more than 16 petabytes and carries Cat AI Assistant, a group of AI agents Caterpillar launched for customers, dealers and technicians in early 2026.
- Which AI models does Caterpillar use?
- Caterpillar has not named the model behind the off-board Cat AI Assistant; in its CES 2026 demo the in-cab version ran the Qwen3 4B model and NVIDIA speech models on an NVIDIA Jetson Thor computer on the machine, and Caterpillar trains NVIDIA-based physical AI models on CoreWeave (Sep 2026).
- How many Caterpillar employees use AI?
- Caterpillar has not said how many of its about 118,000 employees use AI tools; employees can query company data through an internal data assistant, and CTO Jaime Mineart said in Aug 2026 that customers, operators and technicians use Cat AI Assistant.
- How far has AI spread at Caterpillar?
- Caterpillar sits at Piloting: AI runs in production in a handful of named places, led by condition monitoring service leads that produced $1.1 billion of closed sales in 2024, autonomous haul trucks, Cat AI Assistant, launched to customers in early 2026, and an internal data assistant for employees, under Group President Bob De Lange, who oversees Cat Digital and Cat Technology. Caterpillar falls short of Scaling because it has announced no AI tool open to most of its about 118,000 employees, publishes no use-case count or employee usage figure, and its factory digital twins, in-cab assistant and FieldAI robotics work were still pilots or early applications in 2026.
Open questions
- Which large language models power the off-board Cat AI Assistant, and in which cloud do its agents run?
- How many customers, dealers, technicians and employees have used Cat AI Assistant since its launch in early 2026, and when will the in-cab version ship on production machines?
- How many employees use the employee data assistant, does Caterpillar give its about 118,000 employees a sanctioned general AI assistant, and how many use AI tools each week?
- How much of the planned 2.5 times increase in digital and technology investment goes to AI, and what does Caterpillar spend on CoreWeave training, other compute and AI models?
- How much of the $1.1 billion in closed-won sales from condition monitoring leads is incremental, and how much of it is Caterpillar revenue rather than dealer revenue?
- What business return do Caterpillar's coding agents, data assistant, AI translation, factory inspection and Cat AI Assistant deliver, given that none has a published figure?
- Who sits on Caterpillar's Gen AI governance board, and what does it approve or block?
- Whom do the Chief Information Officer and Brandon Hootman report to, and how many people work in Cat Digital and Cat Technology?
- What have the factory digital twin pilots and the FieldAI robotics work changed in output or cost, and will Caterpillar extend them beyond the first sites?
- How many autonomous trucks were in operation at the end of Sep 2026, against the goal of tripling the 2024 count by 2030?
Sources
Caterpillar
- Caterpillar unveils AI-powered future and invests in the workforce building it (Jan 7, 2026)
- CES 2026 keynote transcript, Joe Creed, Ogi Redzic and Jaime Mineart (Jan 7, 2026)
- 2025 Investor Day, full transcript (Nov 4, 2025)
- J.P. Morgan virtual headquarters visit with Bob De Lange and Ogi Redzic, transcript (Mar 21, 2025)
- CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026 fireside chat, transcript (Mar 5, 2026)
- Caterpillar brings intelligent solutions to life at CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026 (Mar 2026)
- Caterpillar takes home Snowflake AI Innovator award (Jun 2026)
- Caterpillar and FieldAI advance AI-powered industrial innovation (Sep 2, 2026)
- Luck Stone builds on autonomous hauling success with Caterpillar (Sep 15, 2026)
- Wells Fargo conference with Joe Creed, transcript (Sep 10, 2026)
- Caterpillar officers: Bob De Lange
- Caterpillar sustainability report, CEO letter
Filings, letters and investor materials
- Caterpillar 2025 Form 10-K (filed Feb 13, 2026)
- Caterpillar 2025 Annual Report (Apr 30, 2026)
- Caterpillar 2026 proxy statement (Apr 30, 2026)
- Form 8-K: Joe Creed to become Chairman on Apr 1, 2026 (Jan 6, 2026)
- Form 8-K: Kyle Epley appointed CFO (Apr 8, 2026)
- Form 8-K exhibit: leadership transition in Resource Industries (Oct 15, 2026)
- Assurant 2026 proxy statement, director biography of Ogi Redzic (Apr 6, 2026)
- Ameren: Jamie Engstrom joins Ameren board of directors (Dec 15, 2025)
- Q3 2026 earnings call transcript (Oct 29, 2026)
- Q2 2026 earnings call transcript (Aug 4, 2026)
- Barclays Industrial Select Conference transcript (Feb 18, 2026)
- Q4 2025 earnings call transcript (Jan 29, 2026)
- Q4 2024 earnings call transcript (Jan 30, 2025)
Partners
- NVIDIA: How Caterpillar is bringing edge AI to the jobsite (Jan 7, 2026)
- AWS Japan blog: manufacturing highlights from AWS re:Invent 2025 (Jan 10, 2026)
- AWS re:Invent 2025 session IND322, Caterpillar's geospatial intelligence solution, community summary (Dec 2025)
- Snowflake: 2026 Data Drivers award winners (Jun 1, 2026)
News
- TechCrunch: Caterpillar is bringing to AI deployment what it learned from automating mining (Aug 30, 2026)
- Constellation Research: Caterpillar's AI autonomy efforts accelerate, but domain knowledge drives returns (Sep 30, 2026)
- Constellation Research: Caterpillar's AI vision takes shape, but data and cloud focus was the precursor (Jan 26, 2026)
- Fast Company Pacesetters: Jamie Engstrom, Caterpillar (2026)
- Observer: 2026 A.I. Power Index (Jul 15, 2026)
- Global Mining Review: Caterpillar expands mining technology capabilities with Skycatch acquisition (Jul 8, 2026)
- Global Mining Review: Caterpillar opens registration for global innovation challenge (May 8, 2026)
- Equipment Finance Advisor: Caterpillar announces leadership transition in Construction Industries (Feb 6, 2026)
- NAM: Caterpillar partners with NVIDIA on AI-enabled construction equipment (Jan 14, 2026)
- CIO.inc: Caterpillar turns equipment into intelligent systems with AI (Jan 8, 2026)
- Construction Equipment Guide: Caterpillar introduces Cat AI Assistant (Jan 6, 2026)
- Interesting Engineering: Caterpillar partners with NVIDIA to expand Cat AI across machines, factories (Jan 7, 2026)
- Fox Business: Construction giant unveils AI to help prevent job site accidents (Jan 8, 2026)
- Diesel Progress: Caterpillar on AI in construction (Apr 18, 2024)
- Purdue University Women in Engineering: Jaime Mineart, champions board profile
- Metis Strategy Technovation: interview with Jaime Mineart (Jan 26, 2026)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Caterpillar profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 1, 2026
