Caterpillar, the century-old construction equipment manufacturer, has seen its stock soar to record highs, reaching a market capitalization of approximately $364 billion as of February 13, 2026, fueled by its strategic positioning in the burgeoning AI market. The company's stock price has more than doubled in the past 12 months, hitting an all-time high of $775, vastly outperforming tech giants like Apple, according to a Fortune report.
This surge in value reflects Caterpillar's adaptation to the AI boom, mirroring the historical "picks and shovels" strategy of the Gold Rush era, where companies profited from providing essential tools to the miners. Caterpillar, known for its massive mining and earthmoving equipment, is now capitalizing on the AI market's growth.
Meanwhile, the tech landscape is also seeing significant shifts. The proliferation of AI agents has raised security concerns. OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent, has seen its publicly exposed deployments jump from roughly 1,000 to over 21,000 in under a week, according to VentureBeat. This rapid expansion has prompted concerns about security vulnerabilities. Bitdefender's GravityZone telemetry, drawn from business environments, confirmed that employees were deploying OpenClaw on corporate machines with single-line install commands, granting autonomous agents access to sensitive data.
A one-click remote code execution flaw, CVE-2026-25253, rated CVSS 8.8, allows attackers to steal authentication tokens and achieve full gateway compromise, as reported by VentureBeat. This vulnerability, coupled with command injection flaws, poses a significant threat.
In other tech developments, the choices for consumers are expanding. The gaming laptop market has diversified significantly, offering options that prioritize performance, thinness, cost, or design, according to a Wired article. This breadth of choice makes selecting a gaming laptop more complex, requiring careful consideration of individual needs.
For those seeking alternatives to Google's Android operating system, options exist, though they often involve removing Google services from Android-based systems, according to Wired. While alternatives like the iPhone offer a privacy-focused approach, they may not fully align with those seeking to distance themselves from Apple's ecosystem.
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