Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) shares jumped 10% on Tuesday after the heavy equipment manufacturer reported second-quarter sales and revenues of $20.5 billion, a 24% increase year over year and the first time in the company's history that quarterly revenue has surpassed $20 billion.

"This is the first time in company history that we have generated over $20 billion in sales and revenues in a single quarter," Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed said in the earnings release.

The results were driven by strong order rates and a growing backlog across all three of the company's primary business segments — Construction Industries, Resource Industries, and Energy & Transportation. Caterpillar's total backlog climbed to $72.1 billion, a 92% increase from the same period a year earlier, exceeding the company's total annual revenue from recent fiscal years and providing significant visibility into future sales.

Operating profit margin reached 20.9% for the second quarter of 2026, compared with 17.3% in the second quarter of 2025, reflecting improved pricing and operational efficiencies.

Caterpillar has increasingly been viewed as a beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, as the company supplies large-scale power generation infrastructure essential for operating data centers. Demand from data center operators for backup and continuous power solutions — including reciprocating engines, gas turbines, and integrated power systems — has contributed to the surge in the company's Energy & Transportation segment. The segment's growth aligns with rising electricity consumption forecasts for data centers, which are expanding rapidly to support power-intensive AI training and inference workloads that require substantially more energy per facility than conventional cloud computing.

Shares of Caterpillar are up approximately 60% year to date, making the stock one of the top contributors to the Dow Jones Industrial Average's (DJIA) push to record highs in 2026. The company, founded in 1925 and headquartered in Irving, Texas, is a constituent of the Dow and one of the world's largest manufacturers of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines.

The second-quarter results underscore how infrastructure spending tied to AI-driven data center expansion, along with robust demand in construction and mining, continues to fuel growth for the industrial bellwether. Key indicators that market participants are monitoring include whether the company's record order backlog translates into sustained revenue growth in coming quarters and how effectively Caterpillar can maintain margins amid commodity price fluctuations and labor cost pressures.