MarketsJun 17, 2026
Rackspace Is One of This Year's Biggest Turnaround Stories. Can It Keep Delivering?
Turnaround Strategy
Rhea Lobo
Discover
Rackspace Technology entered 2026 trading below $1, a relic of a pre-AI infrastructure era that no longer fit the market.
Six months later, it's the strongest performer in the Russell 2000, up over 500% year-to-date. It just signed a binding agreement to deploy 30 megawatts of AMD compute across its global data centers.
The company is now positioning itself as the single accountable operator for enterprise AI infrastructure in regulated industries.
Traditional enterprise AI forces companies to rent GPU capacity by the hour and manage their own security, compliance, and accountability across multiple vendors each owning a piece. Rackspace absorbs all of it.
"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, CEO of Rackspace Technology.
The AMD deal formalizes this architecture. AMD Instinct GPUs handle heavy AI workloads, while AMD EPYC CPUs handle general data processing.
The phased deployment runs from late 2026 through 2028, with healthcare providers already among the first to show interest.
The Palantir Technologies partnership signed in February adds another layer. Rackspace hosts, deploys, and manages Palantir's Foundry and AI Platform for enterprise customers, deepening its role as the managed layer between raw compute and enterprise outcomes.
Rackspace carries a $1.6B first-lien term loan due in 2028. That debt was trading at 29 cents on the dollar in mid-February and is now quoted at 93.5 to 95.5 cents.
The recovery reflects genuine creditor conviction, with Apollo, Hudson Bay Capital Management, and Royal Bank of Canada's distressed desk all holding paper here.
Still, the 2028 maturity sits right inside the AMD deployment window, and any financing shortfall for planned deployments rests entirely with Rackspace.
The company also announced a 15% global workforce reduction this week, framed as a pivot toward managed enterprise AI.
Cost discipline matters when you're carrying that debt load, but it also signals the old business is being wound down faster than the new one is fully built.
BMO analyst Keith Bachman raised his price target to $5 from $2 in May, a call blown past before the ink dried, with shares trading near $7 this week.
The stock has outrun analyst models, which typically means one of two things. The market is right and the thesis is bigger than consensus, or the rally has priced in execution that hasn't happened yet.
Rackspace has a differentiated wedge in a market nobody else is attacking the same way, two heavyweight partners in Advanced Micro Devices and Palantir, and a debt structure recovering fast.
The 2028 maturity is the live wire. If deployments slip or financing stalls, the equity story unravels at exactly the wrong moment. The company that built its comeback on being the one accountable partner now has to prove it can actually deliver.
