AMD and Rackspace sign deal for 30MW of governed AI compute

AMD and Rackspace Technology have signed an agreement to deploy an initial 30-megawatt footprint of AMD-based AI compute across Rackspace’s global data centres, rolling out from late 2026 through 2028.

The deal makes AMD a strategic technology partner at the silicon layer of what Rackspace calls its governed AI stack, and firms up a memorandum of understanding the two companies announced in May.

It brings together AMD Instinct GPUs - including the MI355X and MI350P and future successors - and AMD EPYC CPUs inside an integrated enterprise AI cloud, which Rackspace said lets it route each workload to the appropriate compute while remaining accountable for performance end to end.

At full deployment, the companies said, the 30MW of dedicated AMD capacity is meaningful capacity for regulated enterprise workloads, and they pointed to early interest from healthcare providers seeking accelerated compute for clinical AI and inference.

“Enterprises in regulated industries need AI infrastructure that is governed from the ground up, with one operator accountable for business outcomes, not a collection of vendors each owning a piece,” said Gajen Kandiah, chief executive of Rackspace Technology.

"This collaboration combines the right compute with the right operating model and delivers something the market hasn't offered before: a governed AI stack with one accountable partner from silicon to outcomes."

“As enterprise AI evolves, customers need infrastructure that can deliver the right mix of accelerated and general-purpose compute for each workload,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, compute and enterprise AI at AMD.

“By bringing together leadership AMD AI compute solutions and Rackspace’s governed cloud operating model, we are helping regulated enterprises deploy high-performance AI infrastructure with the openness, scalability and accountability needed to run AI at enterprise scale.”

Both companies said they will commit sales, marketing and engineering staff to jointly pursue enterprise customers for the AMD-powered infrastructure across regulated industries.

The agreement will also accelerate delivery of the four integrated capabilities announced with the earlier MOU: Enterprise AI Cloud, Enterprise Inference Engine, Inference as a Service, and Bare Metal AMD Instinct, offering a governed stack from bare metal compute through fully operated inference.