Rackspace Technology

Although the founders began as application developers for end-users, they found that most companies did not either know how or want to host their applications. The founders wanted to focus on application development–not hosting–but they were unable to find an opportunity to outsource the hosting work. Eventually, the founders realized that it would be better to create a product to serve the hosting need and launch it as a company. Rackspace was launched in October 1998 with Richard Yoo as its CEO. Although most hosting companies focused on the technology end of hosting, Rackspace created its "Fanatical Support" offering to focus on service and support. On March 28, 2000, Rackspace received funding through lead investor Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. George J. Still, Jr., Managing Partner at Norwest, subsequently joined the Board of Directors.

In 2008, Rackspace moved its headquarters from a building once occupied by Datapoint Corporation 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. The city of Windcrest purchased 111 acres south of the mall to create a residential and retail complex. The facility is located next to Roosevelt High School, and many Roosevelt students intern at Rackspace.Fortune's "Top 100 Best Companies to Work For 2008" placed Rackspace as No.?32 the first year that Rackspace applied for consideration. The company was praised for its transparency. Regular "Open Book" meetings are held where the top level leaders share in-depth financial information with all employees. In 2011 and 2013, the company was named as one of the top 100 places to work by Fortune.On August 8, 2008, Rackspace opened for trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "RAX" after its initial public offering 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 their Dallas–Fort Worth data center – including those of Rackspace Cloud.On September 8, 2010, Rackspace received national attention when they decided to discontinue providing web hosting service to one of their customers, Dove World Outreach Center. This was in reaction to Dove World's pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn several copies of the Qur'an on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Rackspace claims that this violated their company policy. This move came under criticism, notably from Terry Jones himself, who described it as an "indirect attack on our freedom of speech." Others questioned the appropriateness of Rackspace's action, stating that there is "absolutely no reason for web hosts to have an editorial policy, and this only gives Jones more attention and makes him look more persecuted."In August 2016, it was confirmed that 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 on May 16 to work for a smaller private company in a different city. In May 2017, Rackspace named Joe Eazor as its new CEO.In April 2019, the company named Kevin Jones as its new CEO.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 . 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 their hosted Exchange users . 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 Microsoft365 rather than wait to have their Exchange-based solutions restored. On Monday 5 December 2022, the first full day of trading after the incident , Rackspace's shares were down as much as 16% .