Good morning, CFOs. Google parent Alphabet announces $85 billion equity raise for data centers; what is personalized pricing? (consumers may be about to find out); plus, shoppers are spending more at Macy’s.

The financing ripple effects from the great artificial-intelligence race have a new example, this time from Google.

Google parent Alphabet announced an $85 billion equity raise for data centers, my colleague Katherine Blunt reports, in her story on the most recent tech company to earmark unprecedented sums of money to build massive data centers.

Background and context: Google and other large tech companies in recent months have announced significant upward revisions to their capital-expenditure forecasts as the AI race necessitates the frantic construction of hangar-sized buildings packed with servers, networking hardware and cooling systems.

Some key stats: Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta Platforms and Amazon.com last year collectively devoted $410 billion to capex and are expected to spend more than $670 billion this year.

For details on Google’s novel approach to getting around some of the major bottlenecks facing data-center builders, read on here.

📆 Earnings

• Brown-Forman
• Ciena
• Cooper Cos.
• DocuSign
• Lululemon Athletica
• Planet Labs
• Samsara

Online shoppers are used to seeing prices change by the day or hour or minute, a trend our own Jennifer Williams wrote about in her story last summer on dynamic pricing, where the same fare or rate shifts for everyone based on supply and demand.

Our colleague Jackie Snow raises another idea: What if the price you get is set for you alone—a measure of what the retailer thinks you’ll pay based on the data it has about you—including who you are demographically, where you live and what you do online?

Dynamic pricing has become fairly common across industries, including airfares and ride-shares. What is different now and concerning to researchers is the possibility that online retailers could use personal data to set a higher base price for individual consumers, without their knowledge. Read on here.

📰 Other headlines

• U.S. Proposes New Tariffs on China, EU Over Forced Labor
• Technology Sector Leads U.S. Layoff Plans
• Shoppers Are Spending More at Macy’s as Turnaround Continues
• Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Set to Make $600 Million on Universal Stake
• Medtronic Posts Higher Profit, Sales
• Terms Revealed for SpaceX’s Unconventional $75 Billion IPO
• Why Berkshire Hathaway Went Window-Shopping at Macy’s
• A Short Seller’s Fraud Conviction Is Spooking Wall Street
• Ukraine Strikes St. Petersburg Ahead of Putin’s Economic Forum
• He Was the Knicks Owner Who Could Do Nothing Right. Now James Dolan Can’t Miss.
• Top AI CEOs Call for Law Protecting Against Biological Weapons
• The Hormuz Squeeze Is Redrawing the Oil Map for Good

CMS Energy, the Jackson, Mich.-based energy provider, named Sri Maddipati as its next CFO, succeeding Rejji Hayes, who is retiring effective June 3. Maddipati, currently president of electric supply and senior vice president of the company's primary business, Consumers Energy, will also assume the title of executive vice president of CMS Energy and Consumers Energy. Chris Fultz will succeed him as senior vice president and president of electric supply at Consumers Energy, the company said.

—Elias Schisgall contributed to today’s Ledger.

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