Remember when Natural gas and nuclear power were going to save the AI data center boom ? Caterpillar Inc. is making a killing selling generators ! Caterpillar moved to the center of the AI infrastructure buildout this week as developer Nscale said it would use the company’s natural gas generator sets to power a major new West Virginia data center campus tied to Microsoft and NVIDIA. Before the Iranian war, Nov. 2025: "Meeting the power demand from AI will likely require the United States to increase natural gas production by 10%-15% by the early 2030s" The picture now looks very different. So much so that it is affecting the AI chip suppliers: "Higher energy costs for AI data centers could slow AI infrastructure buildouts, while fabs in Taiwan and South Korea would face growing cost pressures from higher LNG prices," wrote Phelix Lee, an equity analyst at Morningstar, in a Tuesday note, referencing the costs of liquified natural gas. Shares of TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and SK hynix key AI chip suppliers have swung sharply since the conflict began, at one point falling between 9% and 22%, as investors assess rising energy and supply risks. Rich Miller Alban Hohmann-Schauly Alex Sen Maha El Dahan
