Caterpillar taps Nvidia to bring artificial intelligence to its construction equipment

Caterpillar is delving deeper into integrating artificial intelligence and automation into its fleet of construction machines through a partnership with semiconductor giant Nvidia.

The construction equipment giant is trialling an AI-powered assistant system on its Cat 306 CR mid-sized compact excavator. The system, dubbed “Cat AI,” was built using Nvidia’s Jetson Thor physical AI platform, and will be demonstrated at CES on Wednesday.

Cat AI is built on a fleet of AI agents and can help answer machine operators’ questions, allow them to access resources, provide safety tips, and schedule services, Brandon Houtman, vice president of data and artificial intelligence at Caterpillar, told TechCrunch.

One of the biggest benefits of bringing this technology to these devices is the data these systems collect and send back.

“Our customers don’t live in front of a laptop day in and day out, they live in the dirt,” Hotman said. “Being able to get the insights and take the action they need as they do the work is very important to them.”

Caterpillar is also piloting digital twins of construction sites using Nvidia’s Omniverse library of simulation resources to test scheduling scenarios and better calculate the amount of construction materials a project will need. Caterpillar machines send approximately 2,000 messages to the company every second, Hotman said. This data will help them build these simulations.

The company already has fully autonomous vehicles in the mining sector, and Houtmann said these pilots are a great next step as the company looks to bring more automation into its portfolio.

“The reason we started here is because it was a real challenge for our customers today that needed to be addressed, and it was also something we had some real momentum on and felt we could bring to market very quickly,” Hotman said. “What we also liked was that it gave us kind of a technological foundation to build on afterward.”

Working with companies like Caterpillar — a legacy brand not often intertwined with the tech industry — seems to fit well with Nvidia’s physical AI strategy.

Bill Daly, Nvidia’s chief scientist, told TechCrunch in 2025 that the chipmaker views physical AI as the next frontier for the company and its powerful GPUs.

During its CES keynote on Monday, Nvidia laid out plans for its entire physical AI ecosystem, which includes open AI models like the company’s Cosmos family of models, simulation tools, and developer kits.

While some may think that physical AI is only for robotics companies, Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge AI at Nvidia, told TechCrunch that the company takes on a much broader definition as everyone is building robots today.

“Physical AI is the next wave of AI,” Talla said. “Nvidia is a leader in computers that train models, that perform simulations to test models and deploy models in robotics, whether [that’s] Self-driving car or caterpillar machine.

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