Rackspace Technology has announced the appointment of Gajen Kandiah as its new Chief Executive Officer. Under Kandiah’s leadership, Rackspace will advance its AI-first multicloud strategy by designing, building, and operating governed multicloud environments for AI and data workloads across private, public, and sovereign clouds. He assumed the role effective September 3, 2025.
Kandiah joins Rackspace with deep leadership experience across services, infrastructure, software, and AI. Most recently, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Hitachi Digital, where he led the company’s global AI strategy and transformation initiatives across industrial and enterprise portfolios. He also served as Chief Executive Officer of Hitachi Vantara, and earlier held senior leadership roles at Cognizant, where he led its digital business and digital engineering efforts.
Why this matters: This appointment signals that Rackspace is leaning harder into AI-led cloud transformation at a time when enterprise demand is shifting from generic cloud management to governed, workload-specific multicloud execution. Bringing in a CEO with operating experience across Hitachi Digital, Hitachi Vantara, and Cognizant suggests Rackspace wants stronger alignment between AI strategy, infrastructure modernization, and commercial growth.
