Axios Closer

April 30, 2026
Thursday β .
Today's newsletter is 793 words, a 3-minute read.
π The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 1%.
π₯Ά Today's stock spotlight: Meta (-8.6%). Investors seemed to recoil at the company's spending plans for next year, a day after Meta forecast capex to come in as high as $145 billion.
1 big thing: Profitable picks and shovels
Caterpillar β which was formed decades before computers and nearly a century before ChatGPT β is becoming an AI play.
- The heavy equipment maker recorded a 22% increase in Q1 revenue compared with a year earlier, to $17.4 billion.
- That crushed S&P Capital IQ estimates of $16.4 billion.
- It included a 38% increase in construction industry revenue and a 22% rise in its power and energy segment.
Between the lines: Much of Caterpillar's growth in power and energy is being driven by data center demand and the electricity needed to support cloud computing and generative AI.
- Caterpillar makes the engines and turbines that supply both primary and backup power to those facilities, as well as the electrical infrastructure to run them.
Zoom in: CEO Joe Creed said Caterpillar has accumulated a "record" backlog in orders β totaling $63 billion, up 79% from a year earlier.
- "Customers are committing to longer-term orders with some orders well into 2028," he said on an earnings call.
The impact: CAT is the second largest component in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, representing more than 10% of the index, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
- The stock rose 9.9% today, contributing to a 790-point rise in the Dow.
Our thought bubble: The AI economy continues to translate into demand for actual stuff like Nvidia chips and Caterpillar machines.
- That's making it increasingly difficult to argue the AI boom is a mirage.
2. Lilly continues to fly high on GLP-1s
Eli Lilly delivered a 56% revenue boost and upped its earnings outlook as it extends its lead in the surging GLP-1 space.
Zoom in: The weight loss drug boom spawned a 65% increase in sales volume for the company, while realized prices declined 13%.
- The drug giant's stock rose 9.8% today after the earnings report.
π State of play: The company's first oral pill for obesity, Foundayo, is off to a strong start in its initial weeks on the market, executives said.
- Lilly USA president Ilya Yuffa said on an earnings call that the company has already attracted 8,000 prescribers and 20,000 users of the medicine.
π What we're watching: Whether the pill generates new patients or cannibalizes sales from injectable GLP-1 treatments Zepbound and Mounjaro.
- So far, 80% of Foundayo users "are new" to GLP-1 treatments, Yuffa said. "So this is expansive in bringing new people into being treated for overweight or obesity."
3. π° Stunning stat: $1 trillion
That's what some analysts are predicting for AI-related capital expenditures in 2027.
Zoom in: Both Evercore and Bank of America are forecasting spending levels over the 13-digit mark for next year, with estimates for 2026 between $800 and $900 billion, per CNBC.
4. Other happenings
5. Undoing extinction
Colossal Biosciences, the company that's attempting to bring back the woolly mammoth and the dodo, said it's aiming to revive another species: the bluebuck.
- Why it matters: The bluebuck β a member of the antelope family once found in South Africa β was hunted to extinction more than two centuries ago.
Zoom in: Colossal said the bluebuck β which got its name from its silvery bluish hue β is the sixth member of the company's "de-extinction portfolio."
- The company already generated global buzz in 2025 when it showed off multiple dire wolves, which had been extinct for more than 12,500 years.
𧬠Colossal CEO Ben Lamm tells Axios that the company has obtained bluebuck DNA, mapped it and compared it to the animal's closest living relatives β and now it's in the final, and most difficult, phase of genomic editing.
- He says the company is aiming for a birth in "2028-ish," which will come after a nine-month gestation period via a surrogate.
𦣠What we're watching: The company's highest-profile effort is its woolly mammoth project, which Lamm said remains on track to deliver its first birth in 2028.
- "The team is in the last stages of editing," he says. "The next stage will be doing embryo transfer into elephants."
ποΈ On this day in 1925, the Dodge Brothers automobile company was sold to the investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. β three years before Chrysler acquired it. Coincidentally, on this same day in 2009, Chrysler filed for bankruptcy β with Dodge among its core brands.
Today's newsletter was edited by Pete Gannon and copy edited by Sheryl Miller.
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Catch up on the day's biggest business stories and look ahead to important trends. Led by Nathan Bomey.




