How New Digital Edge CEO Plans to Scale Hyperscale Growth

This week Group President of Digital Edge John Freeman was announced as the successor to Samuel Lee as company CEO. 

Effective from the second quarter of 2025, Samuel will transition to be a Senior Advisor to the Board, where industry experts Maile Kaiser and Eanna Murphy will also join as non-executive directors. 

Digital Edge, a portfolio company of Stonepeak, is a leading developer and operator of interconnection and hyperscale edge data centres that operate across Asia. It is the hope that John Freeman’s appointment as CEO will further drive the company’s data centre growth as it plans to further expand upon its data centre technology offerings.

Speaking on his appointment, John said: “I am honored to step into the role of CEO, and excited about the opportunity to continue working alongside our partners and the incredibly talented team at Digital Edge to provide timely and diverse AI and cloud-ready data centers and connectivity solutions to our customers.”

Who is John Freeman?

John is an industry veteran with more than two-and-a-half decades of experience working within the data centre and  technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) industry. 

He has led global teams across Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) and was a founding executive of Digital Edge. Since the company’s inception, he has served on the Board and was previously Chief Legal Officer before becoming Group President in 2024.

Previously, John worked at Tata Communications for 16 years, with his last role at the company Chief Legal and Compliance Officer in Singapore.

Samuel Lee shares: “As I transition to the role of Senior Advisor, I do so with immense pride in what we have built and with great confidence in the future of Digital Edge. I am sincerely grateful for the support of our employees, customers, and partners throughout my tenure at Digital Edge. 

“John is a visionary leader with a passion for the team, our customers, and the communities we serve, and I look forward to the company’s continued success under his leadership.”

In addition to John, the Board’s two new non-executive directors, Maile Kaiser and Eanna Murphy, are well-established within the data centre industry. 

Maile is currently Chief Revenue Officer at CoreSite, having been there since 2012, but has also held critical positions at IO Data Centers, AboveNet and Oracle.

Eanna is a Senior Operating Partner at Stonepeak and was previously Chief Operating Officer of Yondr, where he founded Yondr’s platform in the Americas region. Prior to this, he spent more than ten years in senior roles on Google’s data centre team. 

Digital Edge continues to grow

Their addition to the Board, alongside John’s appointment, is a bid from Digital Edge to reinforce its commitment to excellence in leadership and innovation. 

The company hopes this will position it for even more continued growth, particularly as the digital infrastructure landscape continues to shift to make way for AI and cloud technologies. 

Digital Edge has been specialising in robust cloud infrastructure and colocation services for some time. Eager to meet the changing needs of modern businesses, the company has focused on the high availability and scalability of its data centre offerings to support mission-critical operations.

In January 2025, it was announced that Digital Edge had raised US$1.6bn to expand its APAC data centre services, whilst specifically aiming to bridge digital divides and interconnect hyperscale data centres to support AI and cloud demands from customers across the region.

Founded in early 2020, Digital Edge currently owns and operates 21 data centers and delivers over 500MW of critical IT load in service and under construction across Japan, Korea, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

The company also holds an additional 300MW reserved for future development in strategic locations and is planning to open its first facility in its 300MW campus in Navi Mumbai in the second quarter of 2025. 

This is in addition to a hyperscale edge facility in downtown Tokyo referred to as TY07, which is its ninth data centre facility in Japan.

“We are very thankful for Samuel’s stewardship over the past five years as the business has scaled, and are excited for John to lead the business into its next phase of growth,” comments Andrew Thomas, Senior Managing Director at Stonepeak and Chairman of the Board of Digital Edge. 

“We are also thrilled to welcome Maile and Eanna to the Board, each of whom brings world-class industry expertise to the business as we continue to expand.”

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