Digital Edge announces leadership updates 

• Samuel Lee transitions to senior advisor to the board
• John Freeman to succeed Samuel Lee as CEO in Q2 2025

Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings Pte Ltd, a leading developer and operator of interconnection and hyperscale edge data centres across Asia and a portfolio company of Stonepeak, has announced that group president John Freeman will succeed Samuel Lee as CEO, effective in the second quarter of 2025. In conjunction, Lee will transition to the role of senior advisor to the board. Digital Edge also announced that industry veterans Maile Kaiser and Eanna Murphy will join the board as non-executive directors.

Freeman is an experienced leader with more than two and a half decades in the data centre and TMT industry, leading global teams across Asia, the Americas, Europe, and MEA. He is a founding executive of Digital Edge, serving on the company’s board since its inception, and was previously chief legal & compliance officer before becoming group president in 2024.

The board’s two new non-executive directors, Maile Kaiser and Eanna Murphy, also have extensive data centre expertise. Kaiser is currently chief revenue officer at CoreSite, having joined in 2012, and previously held roles at IO Data Centers, AboveNet, and Oracle. Murphy 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. He also spent more than a decade in senior roles on Google’s data centre team.

Their appointments, along with Freeman’s transition to CEO, reinforce Digital Edge’s commitment to excellence in leadership and innovation, positioning the company for continued growth in the rapidly evolving digital infrastructure landscape.

Commenting on his appointment, Freeman said: “I am honoured 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 centres and connectivity solutions to our customers.”

Lee stated: “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 Digital Edge’s future. I am sincerely grateful for the support of our employees, customers, and partners throughout my tenure. Freeman 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.”

Andrew Thomas, senior managing director at Stonepeak and chairman of the board of Digital Edge, commented: “We are very thankful for Lee’s stewardship over the past five years as the business has scaled, and we are excited for Freeman to lead the company into its next phase of growth. We are also thrilled to welcome Kaiser and Murphy to the board, each of whom brings world-class industry expertise as we continue to expand.”

Digital Edge recently secured more than US$1.6 billion (RM7 billion) in new capital through a combination of equity and debt financing to fuel its next phase of growth. This capital will enable the company to accelerate its expansion and meet the increasing and evolving cloud and AI demands across the region.

Founded in early 2020, Digital Edge currently owns and operates 21 data centres, delivering 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.