When people talk about the AI boom, they often think of shiny data centers, powerful chips and billion-dollar startups desperately racing to build the next model in a new generation. Yet, scratch beneath the headlines and slick demos, and one of the biggest winners of this technology revolution isn’t seeing or writing much code at all — instead they’re driving trucks, bulldozers and earth-moving machinery. They’re getting (very) richThe companies that are fueling the physical backbone of AI infrastructure are getting rich, and almost no one is talking about this.
It so happens that training giant artificial intelligence models demands enormous amounts of electricity, cooling and floor space, which is why a wave of new data centers are springing up across the United States at a rate hardly any industry has experienced. Behind every glimmering server hall and cavernous GPU farm is land to clear, ground to break, power grids to upgrade, concrete to pour. And that is where the big amounts of money are moving.
Construction behemoths, excavation companies and equipment makers who have not actively sought the riches of Silicon Valley are finding themselves as the gate-keepers in an obscure mini-economy that has blossomed in the shadow of Silicon Valley’s popular obsession. Heavy machinery is in high demand as data-center growth increases and companies operating far from the tech world are suddenly central to the future of AI. And companies that trade in excavators, dump trucks, cranes and other sophisticated construction equipment have been overwhelmed with orders as tech companies look for greater capacity.
Some in the industry say AI-powered construction has a scale and pace that are comparable to the interstate-highway boom of the 1950s — a national effort that deployed an enormous workforce over a relatively short period based on one unifying trend. The change now is that government spending, used as a lever to drive growth in past generations, has been replaced by the race to train ever-larger A.I. models — all of which require more power and physical space than the ones before.
The true story is the amount of money being spent just to prep the land before a single server shows up. Bulldozer companies have record orders. Steel suppliers are being inundated with requests for framing materials, and can’t keep pace. Concrete firms already have backlogs that stretch months out. Even companies supplying simple electrical components — stuff like transformers, wiring and industrial cooling equipment — are struggling to keep up with orders, creating bottlenecks that drag entire projects down.
What is so strange at the moment, is that tech companies have never been forced to depend on traditional industrial players is such volume. For many years, software companies could grow without amassing massive footprints. Now the opposite is true. AI isn’t merely a software revolution — it is, or will be, a construction revolution, a land use and real estate revolution and an industrial revolution. And the companies holding the keys are not those building chatbots. They’re the ones driving big machines in the dirt.
Some contractors call it the most frenetic building boom they have ever seen. The money moves fast, decisions are made on the spot and deadlines are unforgiving. Tech giants can’t wait for data centers next year — they need them right now. And they’re willing to pay a premium for the speed. In the scramble for solutions to that problem, firms that specialize in lightning-fast development are booming — particularly those with equipment and manpower deployed at a scale few others can match.
And, quietly, investors who had poured everything into software start-ups are now turning to industrial companies. Shares tied to construction equipment, energy infrastructure and data-center suppliers have made big gains as Wall Street wakes up to the realization that the future of AI largely depends on real-world assets as much as digital ones. The winners aren’t the start-ups whose pitch decks are glossiest. They are the companies that sell machines able to move thousands of tons of soil a day.
For local communities, the boom is remaking landscapes. Rural regions once marked by dairy farms and cornfields have become home to colossal construction projects as tech companies take advantage of open space and cheap power. In some places, the never-ending rumble of diesel engines and the dusk-till-dawn glow of construction lights have become new tunes on the soundtrack of the AI era.
What’s most surprising is how little these companies resemble the public narrative around artificial intelligence. While policymakers ruminate on the ethics of AI and tech CEOs pursue moonshot breakthroughs, these heavy-machinery companies are focused on something far more straightforward: building as quickly as they can. Their work is not headline-grabbing, but without them the entire AI edifice would crumble.
There’s a quiet irony here. For years, fears about how artificial intelligence technology would upend the workforce have been dominated by a parade of horribles that keeps changing. But as of now, the AI boom is having the opposite effect — it’s leading to a surge in people doing physical labor, construction and industrial jobs. The machines that are powering the world’s best and brightest algorithms aren’t displacing workers in these fields. They’re using more of them than ever.
With AI models growing lager and companies racing to build out global capacity, the biggest beneficiaries in the near term won’t be of the ones releasing new chatbots or autonomous agents. It’ll be they who provide the trucks, cranes and bulldozers building out the physical frontier of artificial intelligence.
The future of A.I. may be in the algorithms — but for now, it lives with the people building the ground beneath them.
