Caterpillar shares fell 4.34% to $783.02 on Monday as concerns about a potential slowdown in artificial intelligence infrastructure spending weighed on heavy industrial stocks. Weekend comments from Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk calling for a voluntary deceleration in frontier model development for safety alignment, together with reports that OpenAI has delayed its public debut until at least 2027, raised concerns about hyperscaler (large-scale cloud computing company) capital expenditure. The concern is particularly relevant to Caterpillar’s Power & Energy segment, where sales surged 72% in the second quarter of 2026 on demand for natural-gas generator sets and turbines used by off-grid AI compute campuses. A 2-gigawatt equipment deployment for American Intelligence & Power is scheduled to begin deliveries this month. Rising energy prices provided a partial counterweight: Brent crude climbed above $108 a barrel as Middle East tensions intensified, while global diesel prices reached records. Although expensive fuel can pressure construction fleet margins, stronger oil and commodity prices have historically supported exploration and production spending across Caterpillar’s Resource Industries and Energy & Transportation divisions.