AI Build-Out Powers Two Very Different Winners: Dell and Caterpillar Both Surge

The artificial intelligence infrastructure boom is minting winners far beyond the chipmakers, and on Tuesday two of them made that case emphatically. Dell Technologies (DELL) jumped roughly 8% as it deepened its push into AI cloud financing, while Caterpillar (CAT) climbed about 6% after data center power demand drove the heavy-equipment maker past $20 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in its history. Together, they show how the same wave is lifting both the servers inside data centers and the machines that build and power them.

Key Points

• Dell (DELL) rose about 8% and joined Nvidia and Michael Dell in backing Volta, a new AI cloud startup valued at $2.4 billion.
• Volta raised $300 million in venture funding, secured $5 billion in additional financing, and landed a $10 billion, six-year cloud contract with an unnamed AI developer.
• Caterpillar (CAT) surged after Q2 revenue climbed 24% to $20.54 billion — a company first — and adjusted EPS leapt to $8.17 from $4.72.
• Caterpillar raised its full-year revenue outlook to mid-to-high-teens growth and reported a record $72.1 billion backlog.
• Both moves trace back to the same catalyst: surging AI data center construction and the power infrastructure it demands.

Dell Bets on the Financial Plumbing of AI

Dell (DELL) is no longer content to simply ship servers, and its latest move proves it. The company, alongside Nvidia and founder Michael Dell, backed Volta Infra Holdings, a newly launched AI cloud provider that just raised $300 million in venture funding co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital. Crucially, Volta also secured an additional $5 billion in financing designed to help a broader mix of technology firms afford Nvidia’s expensive chips — a market gap its founders, both former Brookfield infrastructure executives, spotted early.

Beyond the capital, Dell will serve as a technology partner and supply gear to Volta’s facilities. Meanwhile, Volta has already signed a $10 billion, six-year contract to deliver cloud capacity to an unnamed AI developer, locked up one gigawatt of near-term power, and lined up data center sites in Norway, Texas, and Wyoming. As a result, Dell positions itself not just as a hardware vendor but as a stakeholder in the financing web that keeps AI compute flowing.

Caterpillar Clears a Historic Revenue Milestone

Caterpillar (CAT), by contrast, sells the tangible backbone of the boom, and its second quarter shattered records. Revenue rose 24% to $20.54 billion — the first time the company has ever topped $20 billion in a single quarter — while adjusted earnings per share vaulted to $8.17 from $4.72, comfortably beating the $6.22 analysts expected. CEO Joe Creed pointed to “broadening momentum across all three of our primary segments,” and the numbers backed him up: construction industries soared 35%, power and energy climbed 17%, and resource industries gained 20%.

Consequently, management lifted its full-year outlook, now guiding for mid-to-high-teens revenue growth versus prior low-double-digit expectations. The order backlog tells the same story, swelling $34.6 billion year over year to a record $72.1 billion. Even factoring in an estimated $2.2 billion in tariff costs for the year, Caterpillar expects strong third-quarter growth — a signal that demand tied to data centers and broader US manufacturing shows little sign of cooling.

Why Both Stories Matter Together

Taken together, Dell and Caterpillar illustrate how deeply the AI trade now reaches. On one end, Dell wires up the compute and helps finance access to it; on the other, Caterpillar supplies the turbines, generators, and construction equipment that turn AI ambitions into physical data centers. Therefore, investors watching the AI theme would do well to look past the semiconductors alone, because the build-out is rewarding the infrastructure layer just as visibly.

What to Watch Next

For Dell (DELL), the key question is how much recurring business its Volta partnership and broader AI server demand ultimately generate. For Caterpillar (CAT), investors should track whether the record backlog converts into sustained growth and how tariff costs evolve through the year. Until then, both stocks stand as evidence that the AI expansion is powering the entire supply chain — not just the chips at its center.