Manufacturing last month rose to its highest level since 2022, when the pandemic‑era recovery spurred a factory‑production frenzy. Today, data centers and a handful of AI‑related industries are the new engines driving the manufacturing sector, prompting companies to invest hundreds of millions to expand their lineups.

Power‑hungry data‑center developers have turned Caterpillar’s once‑prosaic business of electricity generators into the equipment maker’s leading source of profit. The company is investing $725 million to expand generator production at an Indiana plant and has converted another plant in Kansas to produce turbine engines popular with data centers.

Caterpillar is also resuming production of 10‑megawatt generators that were last made in 2022, positioning itself to meet the rising demand for high‑capacity power solutions required by AI workloads.

These moves illustrate how industrial firms are pivoting their business models to seize the moment in the booming AI data‑center market, turning traditional power equipment into a critical component of cutting‑edge technology infrastructure.