Rackspace appoints Chetan Gupta as Chief AI Officer

Rackspace has appointed Chetan Gupta as Chief AI Officer, where he will lead the company's Office of AI.

In the role, Gupta will oversee AI strategy, research, innovation, governance, and adoption across Rackspace and its customers. The appointment is intended to strengthen the company's work with organisations deploying AI in regulated industries, sovereign jurisdictions, and mission-critical operations.

Gupta joins from Hitachi, where he spent nearly a decade leading global AI research. His roles there included General Manager of the Advanced AI Centre in Japan, Vice President of the Industrial AI Lab in North America, and Head of Hitachi's Global AI Centre of Excellence.

Before that, he spent seven years at HP Labs, focusing on AI research and its use in sectors including logistics, manufacturing, energy, and mobility. He has authored nearly 300 papers and patents.

Operational focus

The appointment comes as companies face pressure to move AI projects from trials into day-to-day operations while meeting governance and regulatory requirements. Rackspace is seeking to expand its role with customers that need tighter control over where AI systems run and how they are managed.

That focus is particularly relevant in sectors where outages, compliance failures, or poor model performance can create wider operational risks. These include energy, transport, and other areas tied to essential services.

Gajen Kandiah, Chief Executive Officer of Rackspace, outlined the company's reasoning for the hire.

"Chetan has spent his career building AI for the institutions the world depends on. 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 is precisely the discipline our customers need as they move AI into production inside regulated and sovereign environments. Chetan understands that success depends on more than model capability. It requires strategy, governance, and an operator who carries accountability from silicon to outcomes."

Research background

Rackspace is adding Gupta as many technology suppliers try to define their place in a market shifting from model development to deployment and oversight. For service providers, that means proving they can support customers through infrastructure choices, governance frameworks, and operational management rather than simply offering access to AI tools.

Gupta's background suggests Rackspace wants to emphasise industrial and institutional use cases over consumer-facing applications. His work at Hitachi included what the company described as physical AI, covering systems used in railways, energy grids, factories, and buildings.

Those environments differ from lower-risk software settings because they involve jurisdictional rules, operational accountability, and limited tolerance for failure. Businesses in these areas often require control over data location, system resilience, and auditability before expanding AI use.

Gupta described the challenge in terms of trust and execution.

"AI has reached an inflection point. 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," Gupta said.

"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."

Gupta holds a PhD in mathematics and master's degrees in mathematical computer science and chemical engineering from the University of Illinois Chicago. His appointment gives Rackspace a senior executive focused specifically on AI at a time when customers are looking for clearer accountability over how such systems are introduced and managed.