The company was founded as Rackable Systems in 1999, but adopted the "SGI" name in 2009 after acquiring Silicon Graphics Inc. out of bankruptcy.

[5] The purchase, ultimately for $42.5 million, was finalized on May 11, 2009; at the same time, Rackable announced their adoption of "SGI" as their global name and brand.

[9] In 2010, SGI announced the purchase of all the assets and assumed a limited amount of liabilities of COPAN Systems.

COPAN was a provider of storage archive products for real-time access to long-term persistent data.

[11] In 2011, SGI acquired all outstanding shares of SGI Japan, Ltd.[12] The same year, the company announced the acquisition of OpenCFD Ltd.[13] In December, the company announced Mark J. Barrenechea's resignation as president, chief executive officer and member of the board of directors.