New aircraft orders lead U.S. factory momentum

Data: U.S. Census Bureau; Note: Not adjusted for inflation; Chart: Courtenay Brown/AxiosU.S. businesses kept investing heavily in equipment in September, extending a stretch of strong demand for manufactured goods largely fueled by the AI infrastructure boom.Zoom in: Demand for equipment associated with the AI boom has surged at a pace not seen in recent decades.Orders for computers and related products, such as servers, storage devices and peripherals, surged 27% from a year earlier — including a nearly 4% increase in September alone.For a faster annual pace of growth, you'd have to go back nearly 30 years to January 1997.By the numbers: New orders for durable goods rose 1.8% in September, a sharp increase driven by commercial aircraft orders.Orders excluding transportation equipment rose 0.5%, as did core capital goods orders, a closely watched measure of business investment that extended a five-month streak of gains.Shipments of core capital goods, which feed into GDP estimates of business equipment investment, rose a robust 1.2%.The intrigue: "[Tuesday's] report extends the pattern manufacturing has shown since the spring: Investment-led demand is running ahead of what factori…

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