Caterpillar is looking to expand its production of large reciprocating engines and turbines to meet skyrocketing demand from the data center sector.

The heavy machinery manufacturer said it plans to ramp up production during its Q3 earnings call. CEO Joseph Creed said the company reported one of its strongest third-quarter results to date, driven by strong interest from the data center market.

The company reported that its total backlog reached $78 billion, almost double what it was a year ago. It also reported $3.3bn in profit, up 43 percent Year-over-Year (YoY), and $20.7bn in revenue, up 17 percent YoY.

Within its power and energy division, sales totaled $8.8bn, up 18 percent YoY. The majority of this was due to power generation sales, which saw a 30 percent increase from last year, much of which was tied to data center customers.

“We continue to anticipate full-year growth in Power Generation for both Cat reciprocating engines and Solar turbines, driven by increasing energy demand to support the data center build-out related to cloud computing and generative AI,” said Creed.

Creed went on to state that it expects demand to remain strong from the sector, and the company is continuing to do long-term planning with its data center partners.

“We are continuing to do long-term planning with our big data center customers and prime power customers. We are seeing demand for cloud compute and our backup power continue to be strong. And then AI, obviously, comes in on top of that, and the prime power number,” he said.

The company has signed several deals targeting the data center sector in 2026. Most recently, in March, the firm partnered with US microgrid company OnePWR and carbon management firm Vero3 to develop large-scale power generation and carbon storage projects for data centers and other mission-critical facilities.

In January, the company partnered with AI infrastructure developer American Intelligence & Power Corporation (AIP Corp) to supply 2GW of fast-response natural gas generators for AIP’s planned up to 8GW Monarch Compute Campus in Mason County, West Virginia.

Before this, in August of last year, the company partnered with power infrastructure developer Hunt Energy on a multi-year initiative to deliver upwards of 1GW of generation capacity for data centers in North America.