Caterpillar Keynote at CES: We Build the Invisible Layer of the Tech Stack

Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed understands the puzzled look on the faces of CES attendees as they wander past the company’s West Hall booth.

What’s Caterpillar doing at a consumer electronics show?

“It’s a fair question,” Creed acknowledged at the start of his CES keynote. Creed then calmly explained that “every digital experience, every app that you use, every AI model that you’re running, every connected device in this room, ultimately runs on physical infrastructure. And that doesn’t happen without Caterpillar.”

Over the last decade, Caterpillar has built and deployed a fleet of 1.5 million assets. To make all its huge machines—some the size of a three-story building and weighing more than a fully loaded jetliner—even safer and smarter, Creed announced Caterpillar’s Cat AI interactive multimodal (voice, text, image, video) chatbot, using Nvidia’s latest Jetson Thor robotics platform, which complements Caterpillar’s Helios digital cloud platform. Caterpillar’s chief digital officer Ogi Redzic then conducted a live Cat AI demo with an operator sitting in an excavator in the company’s booth to set a height ceiling limit so as not to interfere with overhead power lines.

“Cat AI assistant is like a proactive partner,” Redzic described. “It flags machines that need attention, provides custom insights, and makes actionable recommendations.” Redzic explained that Cat AI does not depend on the cloud but works on machines, which means “the assistant still works in remote, off-grid locations in bad weather and tough environments.”

Caterpillar then announced five machines equipped with integrated Cat AI would be “coming soon.”

Finally, Creed wanted to address the AI elephant in the room—how AI automated construction vehicles impact jobs. Creed announced to boisterous applause a $25 million investment to fund training, education, and partnerships designed to help people transition into new jobs created by AI. “We’re going to work with our customers, our dealers, schools, and local community partners to put this into action.”

“Here’s what matters the most,” Creed stressed. “As the invisible layer of the modern tech stack gets smarter, the people who build and run it don’t disappear. In fact, they actually become more visible. New roles are going to emerge. Skills are going to evolve.

“We’re making the invisible layer of the modern tech stack much more intelligent,” Creed concluded, “and we’re investing just as boldly in the people who make it all possible.”