1990s Rackspace was founded in 1996 by
Richard Yoo, Dirk Elmendorf and Patrick Condon. Two years later, Graham Weston and Morris Miller provided seed capital and began managing the company. The company began after Yoo dropped out of
Trinity University and launched Cymitar Technology Group out of a garage, through which the company sold internet access to his former classmates. In 1998, the company was renamed Rackspace.
2000s Lanham Napier entered the company in 2000 as its
chief financial officer. Weston stepped down as CEO and that year, he was named chairman. In 2008, Rackspace moved its headquarters to the then-unoccupied
Windsor Park Mall in
Windcrest, Texas. Rackspace's Chairman, Graham Weston, owned the
Montgomery Ward building in the mall until 2006 when it was sold to a developer In 2005, following
Hurricane Katrina, Rackspace employees volunteered to refurbish
the Montgomery Ward into a shelter for 1,300 people. The revitalization of the mall lead to development in the surrounding area, including the creation of Racker Road and the frontage road Fanatical Way, inspired by the company's trademark "Fanatical Support". "Fanatical support" was the company's motto to describe its customer service. This consisted of the disuse of voicemail, live customer support, and
London-based customer service representatives always accessible, which at the time news reports attribute to giving Rackspace an "edge" in the web hosting industry. Later, Rackspace's Fanatical Support would be used to describe a service of providing customer representatives when businesses were implementing cloud hosting. In 2008 Rackspace opened for trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "RAX" after its
initial public offering (IPO) in which it raised $187.5 million. The initial public offering included 15,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $12.50 per share. The IPO did not do well in the public market and lost about 20% of its initial price almost immediately. At around 3:45 PM
CST December 18, 2009, Rackspace experienced an outage for customers using its
Dallas–Fort Worth data center – including those of Rackspace Cloud.
2010s In 2010, Rackspace announced it would discontinue hosting the website for
Dove World Outreach Center after pastor
Terry Jones said he
planned to burn the Qur'an on the anniversary of
9/11. Jones called the move an "indirect attack on our
freedom of speech."
Business Insider also criticized Rackspace's decision. In 2014, Napier stepped down as CEO and Weston was named the interim CEO. Taylor Rhodes was named president and later that year replaced Weston as CEO. In August 2016, it was confirmed that the American
private equity firm,
Apollo Global Management, had reached an agreement to buy the company for $4.3 billion. The sale was completed in November 2016 and Rackspace officially ended trading on the
New York Stock Exchange on November 3, 2016. In May 2017, CEO Taylor Rhodes announced he was leaving the company, and was replaced by Joe Eazor. Eazor was replaced in 2019 by Kevin Jones.
2020s In June 2020 it changed its name to Rackspace Technology. In August 2020 Rackspace Technology opened for trading on the
Nasdaq under the
ticker symbol "RXT" after its
initial public offering (IPO). The Initial public offering of 33,500,000 shares of its common stock at an initial public offering price of $21.00 per share. In September 2022 the company named Amar Maletira as its new CEO. In December 2022 Rackspace suffered a major service outage which affected all its hosted Exchange users (customers who bought email services from Rackspace that involved instances of
Microsoft Exchange hosted on Rackspace's servers). After initial investigation Rackspace declared the incident a 'security incident' and said it had powered down its servers to protect customer data which some commentators speculated might be indicative of a
ransomware incident, a theory that was lent further credence by Rackspace's decision to recommend that customers migrate to
Microsoft 365 rather than wait to have their Exchange-based solutions restored. On Monday December 5, 2022, the first full day of trading after the incident (which started on the previous Friday), Rackspace's shares were down as much as 16% ($0.75). A class action lawsuit against Rackspace Technology, Inc. was filed on December 12, 2022, by Cole & Van Note for tens of thousands of businesses who lost access to their emails and services due to ransomware users. Stephenson, et al. v. Rackspace Technology, Inc. This class action was dismissed by the judge in San Antonio in May, 2023. In June 2023, Rackspace announced Foundry for Generative AI by Rackspace (FAIR™), a groundbreaking global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible and sustainable adoption of generative
AI solutions across industries. In January 2024, Rackspace moved its San Antonio Global Headquarters from Windcrest (
The Castle) to the RidgeWood Plaza II office building, located in north-central San Antonio. In September 2025 the company named Gajen Kandiah as its new CEO, replacing Amar Maletira. == Acquisitions ==