Rackspace names Chetan Gupta as chief AI officer in sovereignty push

Rackspace has announced the appointment of Chetan Gupta as chief AI officer, as the enterprise infrastructure specialist looks to advance its enterprise and sovereign AI strategy.

Gupta will lead Rackspace’s Office of AI, overseeing AI strategy, research, innovation, governance, and adoption across the company and its customers.

He joins the business following almost a decade at Hitachi, where he served in a number of senior AI leadership roles – including general manager of the Advanced AI Center in Japan, vice president of the Industrial AI Lab in North America, and head of Hitachi’s Global AI Center of Excellence.

Earlier in his career, Gupta also spent seven years at HP Labs, where he worked on deploying AI solutions across areas such as logistics, manufacturing, energy, and mobility. He has also authored nearly 300 papers and patents, as well as mentored AI researchers and engineers.

In an announcement, Rackspace CEO Gajen Kandiah said Gupta’s experience developing AI systems for critical environments will be a valuable asset as the firm advances its AI strategy.

"Chetan has spent his career building AI for the institutions the world depends on,” he explained. “At Hitachi, that meant trains, grids, and factories, where AI is not a demo, but an operating commitment measured in uptime, safety, and trust."

Kandiah said that experience will be particularly relevant as Rackspace customers move AI into production within regulated and sovereign environments.

"Chetan understands that success depends on more than model capability,” he added. “It requires strategy, governance, and an operator who carries accountability from silicon to outcomes.”

Rackspace eyes sovereign AI gains

Rackspace positions itself as an operator of the full enterprise AI stack, spanning governed private cloud through to AI inference and agents in production.

Its offering is built around an "Outcomes as a Service" model covering infrastructure, data foundations, and forward-deployed engineering.

The company said Gupta’s appointment will strengthen its ability to help organizations deploy AI safely, economically, and at scale – particularly across regulated industries, sovereign jurisdictions, and mission-critical operations.

Commenting on his new role, Gupta said AI has reached “an inflection point” as organizations shift their focus away from the technology’s capabilities and towards tackling deployment challenges.

“The hard problem is no longer capability. It is trust: taking promising research and turning it into systems that hold up in the real world, under real regulatory and operational constraints," he explained.

"Rackspace occupies a distinct position in the market, operating the full stack for institutions that cannot afford to get AI wrong. I look forward to leading our AI strategy and advancing enterprise and sovereign AI for our customers and across the business."

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Follow ITPro on Google News and add us as a preferred source to keep tabs on all our latest news, analysis, views, and reviews.

You can also follow ITPro on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and BlueSky.