Digital Realty has appointed Stephen Bolze, a veteran executive with deep expertise in global power and large-scale infrastructure, as an independent member of its Board of Directors. The appointment, effective January 1, 2026, brings critical leadership experience in energy and operational excellence to guide the data center provider's growth.
Digital Realty appoints Stephen Bolze, a global energy and infrastructure leader, to its Board of Directors.
Bolze's appointment is effective January 1, 2026.
His background includes senior roles at GE, where he was CEO of GE Power & Water, and at Blackstone's infrastructure business.
His expertise is aimed at addressing the critical industry challenge of power availability for data centers.
The board addition comes as demand for data center capacity, driven by AI and digital transformation, surges.
Bolze currently serves on the boards of Signature Aviation and Tallgrass Energy.
The appointment directly addresses one of the most pressing challenges in the data center industry: securing reliable, scalable power. Stephen Bolze's three-decade career, particularly his leadership of GE's $28 billion Power & Water division, provides Digital Realty with board-level expertise in global power generation, grid infrastructure, and large-scale operational management. This is crucial as energy demands from artificial intelligence and cloud computing intensify.
Both Digital Realty's board chair and Bolze highlighted the strategic importance of his experience. “Steve brings decades of leadership in global power and infrastructure, including deep experience driving innovation and operational excellence at scale. His insights will be invaluable as we continue to expand our platform,” said Mary Hogan Preusse, Chair of the Board. Bolze underscored the core challenge, stating, “Power availability has become one of the biggest challenges facing the data center industry. As demand continues to grow, ensuring the addition of reliable infrastructure at scale is essential.”
Stephen Bolze's career provides a blend of industrial operating experience and financial investment acumen. After 24 years at General Electric in senior executive roles, he co-founded and led the infrastructure portfolio operations at Blackstone, one of the world's largest alternative investment firms. This dual perspective of running massive industrial organizations and managing infrastructure investments is uniquely valuable for a capital-intensive business like data centers that is navigating complex energy markets and expansion plans.
The addition of Stephen Bolze to Digital Realty's board is a clear signal of the company's strategic priorities. It reflects a mature understanding that future growth in the data center sector is inextricably linked to solving the power equation. By integrating an executive with proven experience in delivering reliable energy infrastructure at a global scale, Digital Realty is strengthening its governance to navigate the evolving challenges of capacity, sustainability, and operational resilience in the AI era.
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation, from cloud and digital transformation to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents.
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