Solid8 CEO Michael Lofthouse Resigns After Racist Rant Against Asian Family

Michael Lofthouse said over the weekend he has severed ties with Solid8 in the wake of a viral video showing him deliver a racist tirade.

Michael Lofthouse has stepped down as CEO of Solid8, the Silicon Valley cloud consultancy he founded in 2017, in the aftermath of being filmed hurling racist slurs at an Asian family on July 4 at a swanky restaurant.

Lofthouse confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle over the weekend that he’s already left the company and severed his relationship with it as a result of the viral video.

“I will make it my duty to ensure my personal actions do not continue to have a detrimental impact on those people closest to me,” he said in a statement to the newspaper.

[Related: Cisco's Chuck Robbins Speaks Out On 'Abhorrent' Racism, Frustration With 'Lack Of Change']

The founder of the cloud transformation consultancy was filmed at the restaurant at Carmel Valley’s Bernardus Lodge Hotel flipping off the family sitting at a neighboring table. Before a waitress kicked him out, he raged at them: “Trump’s gonna f- you. You f--- Asian piece of s---.”

The waitress, Gennica Cochran, told San Francisco's ABC7 News she had been watching Lofthouse all night as he acted rude and disruptive, changing tables and sending back food. But when he started yelling at the Orosa Chan family, she stepped in and demanded he leave.

Lofthouse formerly worked for Hewlett-Packard and IBM back in his native England. Then, after moving to the United States in 2010, he held sales positions for Appdynamics, Inkling and BMC Software, before founding his consultancy.

Solid8 bills itself as “Silicon Valley Cloud Transformation Experts” that implement UCaaS, CCaaS, SDWAN, Security, Colocation Datacenter Services, Managed Hosting, and DRaaS, but doesn’t identify on its website any vendor partners. The company, which had an established website, changed its homepage over the weekend with the message “coming soon.” The company did not respond to a CRN request for comment.

After condemnation of his behavior in Carmel on social media, Lofthouse issued a statement, according to Los Angeles-based TV station KABC: "My behavior in the video is appalling. This was clearly a moment where I lost control and made incredibly hurtful and divisive comments. I would like to deeply apologize to the Chan family. I can only imagine the stress and pain they feel. I was taught to respect people of all races, and I will take the time to reflect on my actions and work to better understand the inequality that so many of those around me face every day."