The Answerability Index · Fortune 100 (pilot) · Industrial machineryReal capture · 2026-05-27
We asked three AI systems for the leading US industrial companies. Only Caterpillar got a unanimous answer.
Where US airlines produced a settled top three, industrial machinery fractures: the engines overlapped just 0.31 (airlines: 0.66), agreed on the #1 only a third of the time, and filled most of the list with companies that aren't American.
Observed surfacing & cross-engine divergence — US companies6 prompts · 3 runs/engine · captured 2026-05-27
Surfacing rate0%100%· share of the 6 prompts in which the company was surfaced
σ — cross-engine divergence (std. dev. across the 3 engines)
The headline finding
Even for prompts that say "US," the engines named a mostly foreign field. Across the six prompts, the names that recurred most after Caterpillar were Siemens (Germany), Komatsu (Japan), ABB (Switzerland), Schneider Electric (France), Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Volvo, and FANUC. Only Caterpillar and John Deere — the two Fortune-100 machinery names — reliably anchor the American field. The AI answer to "leading US industrial companies" is, substantially, not American.
The six prompts behind these numbers (US buyer-intent)
- What are the leading industrial machinery manufacturers in the US?
- Which companies make the best heavy construction equipment?
- Best industrial equipment suppliers for large manufacturers?
- Which companies lead in factory automation equipment?
- Top US industrial and manufacturing companies?
- Leading suppliers of industrial machinery for enterprises?
Scope & caveats. Rows show US companies (the index roster); the foreign firms the engines surfaced are reported in the finding above, not charted. Gemini is excluded — its free-tier quota (20/day) capped it at 5 of 18 runs, too sparse to compare. Grok pending — xAI account credits. So this is 3 of the 5 target engines.
How to read this: observed surfacing · within this prompt battery · during this capture window · most-consistently-surfaced, not "best." A measure of AI-mediated perception under bounded conditions — not company quality, not an endorsement.