Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ:RXT) and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) announced a multiyear strategic collaboration focused on developing enterprise artificial intelligence infrastructure tailored for regulated sectors.
The companies said they signed a memorandum of understanding to pursue the creation of an Enterprise AI Cloud designed for organizations that require strong security, governance, and accountability standards.
Collaboration centered on managed AI infrastructure
Under the proposed partnership, the companies plan to combine AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs within a fully managed infrastructure platform.
Rackspace would oversee the complete technology environment, ranging from hardware systems to application management, offering an alternative to current enterprise models where customers typically lease GPU capacity by the hour and manage operations independently.
Four AI-focused service offerings proposed
The framework outlined by the companies includes four potential solutions.
The Enterprise AI Cloud would provide customers with a fully managed private AI environment.
The Enterprise Inference Engine is intended to function as a context-aware runtime platform.
Inference as a Service would deliver managed AMD Instinct GPU infrastructure along with development and deployment tools.
Meanwhile, Bare Metal AMD Instinct would offer dedicated hardware resources for highly specialized AI workloads.
Executives emphasize governance and enterprise deployment
“As enterprises move AI out of the lab and into production environments, they’re asking who they can trust to run it there,” said Gajen Kandiah, CEO of Rackspace Technology. “Governing AI infrastructure in regulated environments with defined accountability is not something you bolt on after the fact.”
Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager of Compute & Enterprise AI at AMD, said the collaboration is designed to bring AMD AI computing capabilities into managed private environments for enterprise deployment.
Agreement remains preliminary
The companies noted that the memorandum of understanding serves only as a framework for possible future collaboration and does not represent binding obligations for either party.
They added that no final agreements have been completed and discussions are still in the early stages.
More about Rackspace and AMD
Rackspace Technology provides cloud computing, managed hosting, and infrastructure services for enterprise customers across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. AMD develops high-performance computing technologies including CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators used in data centers, cloud infrastructure, PCs, and enterprise AI applications.