Ward Hampton talks with Diarmid Massey, CEO of ESR’s data center business, about his journey from rural England to leading data center expansion across Asia-Pacific. Diarmid shares how ESR is rapidly scaling in Japan, Korea, Australia, and India, leveraging local expertise and logistics roots. They discuss Asia’s massive growth potential, industry challenges around ESG and diversity, and the future of AI-driven infrastructure. A sharp look at the forces shaping Asia’s data center boom.

Ward Hampton interviews Tim Hughes from Stack Infrastructure about his unconventional journey from Target overnight shifts and punk rock bands to leading development at one of the data center industry's fastest-growing companies, discussing Stack's hiring philosophy, the "vaporware" problem plaguing the industry, and why human capital matters more than financial capital in project execution.

Bill Barney, chairman of Asian Century Equity and co -founder and chairman of Modularity, a startup providing American -built modular edge data centers and modular cable landing station solutions, crossed fast -growing emerging markets. Bill previously founded and operated as CEO Asian Edge Data Center business, Turbidac, which he sold in 2023. Bill has an impressive non -executive director portfolio career advising PE investors such as EQT and Helios on their data center investments, as well as serving on a number of data center boards. Prior to this, he had an incredibly successful 25 -year executive career in Asia as CEO for Global Cloud Exchange, Relight Communications, and PacNet, and earlier senior roles at MCI Worldcon and Orange, just to name a few.

Randy Brauchman is the co-founder and CEO of EdgeConnex, leveraging over 30 years of experience in telecoms, software and data centres. Under his leadership, EdgeConnex has become a leading provider of innovative data centre solutions and was recognised as a top workplace of the year for two consecutive years.

Before EdgeConnex, Randy was a partner and entrepreneur in residence at TDF Ventures and held key roles such as CTO, COO and CEO at companies including BSG Clearing Solutions and Iridium. His career began at Bellcore, where he advanced to Executive Director of Network Operations Systems and led Nextel Ventures division.

Daniel Efrati, CEO and co-founder of the NED Data Centers, which is creating the future of digital infrastructure in the Middle East. Daniel is a chartered accountant and former investment banking executive with experience in executing equity and debt placements and M&A transactions globally. Prior to founding Ned, he had been involved in over $250 million of data center M&A and financing deals.

David Bloom, founder and chairman of Kao Data. David has a wide ranging background with over 17 years experience in the TMT industry. As an investor, founder, and investment manager. He has personally overseen the deployment of more than 500 million pounds of equity investment.

Having founded K.O. in 2014, David served as board member and in September 2023 became the company's chairman. A serial founder, David founded IP Vision in 2007, Goldacre in 2012 and Net Data Centres, an Israeli-based owner-operator for the Middle Eastern data centre market in 2022. David also has a keen interest in education, having been a youth director and school gubbin.

• In this episode we are joined by Darren Webb

  Co-founder and CEO of Evolution Data Centers. A developer and operator of Colo and Build to Suit Data Centers, which is headquartered in Singapore and focused entirely on challenging emerging markets in Southeast Asia.

  Starting out at the telco industry in the UK over 25 years ago, Darren has worked in all aspects of the digital infrastructure ecosystem and has been in Asia for over 12 years.

  Before starting Evolution, he was the MD for Asia for IO data centers, where he led the Singapore business, ultimately to a cashflow positive exit a few years back.