Caterpillar is furthering its efforts to incorporate AI and automation into its construction equipment fleet through a partnership with semiconductor giant Nvidia.
The construction equipment giant is piloting an AI-assisted system on a mid-sized Cat 306 CR mini excavator. The system, dubbed “Cat AI,” is built using Nvidia’s Jetson Thor physical AI platform and will be demonstrated at CES on Wednesday.
Brandon Hootman, vice president of data and AI at Caterpillar, told TechCrunch that Cat AI is built on a set of AI agents to help answer machine operators’ questions, access resources, provide safety tips and schedule service.
One of the biggest benefits of deploying this technology to these machines is the data these systems collect and send back.
“Our customers don’t live in front of their laptops every day. They live in the dirt,” says Hootman. “The ability to gain insight and take necessary action while on the job is very important to them.”
Caterpillar is also piloting a digital twin of a construction site using Nvidia’s Omniverse library of simulation resources to test schedule scenarios and better calculate the amount of building materials needed for a project. Caterpillar’s machines send about 2,000 messages back to the company every second, Hootman said. This data is useful for building simulations.
Hutman said these pilot programs are a great next step as the company has already introduced fully autonomous vehicles in its mining sector and is looking to introduce more automation into its portfolio.
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“The reason we started here is because this is a real challenge for today’s customers and needed to be addressed, and we felt like we had a lot of momentum and could get to market fairly quickly,” Footman said. “What we also liked was that it provided a kind of technology foundation that we could then build on.”
Working with a company like Caterpillar, a traditional brand not often associated with the tech industry, seems like a good fit for Nvidia’s physical AI strategy.
Bill Dally, Nvidia’s chief scientist, told TechCrunch in 2025 that NVIDIA believes physical AI is the next frontier for the company and its powerful GPUs.
At Monday’s CES keynote, Nvidia announced plans for a full-stack ecosystem for physical AI, including open AI models such as the company’s Cosmos model family, simulation tools, and developer kits.
While some may think physical AI is just for robotics companies, Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge AI at Nvidia, told TechCrunch that the company sees a broader definition because everyone is building robotics these days.
“Physical AI is the next wave of AI,” says Talla. “NVIDIA is pioneering that with computers that train models, run simulations to test the models, and then deploy the models to robots, whether it’s self-driving cars or Caterpillar machines.”
See all of TechCrunch’s CES coverage here.
