SAN FRANCISCO — Rune, an energy-infrastructure startup, has raised $40 million in Series A funding to build data centers that plug directly into solar farms and skip the electric grid altogether, betting that power availability, not chip supply, is now the binding constraint on how fast AI companies can expand.
The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Activate Capital, Committed Capital, Timeless Partners and Logos Fund, according to Unite.AI. The financing brings Rune's total funding to $53.5 million and arrives alongside the launch of its flagship product, RELIC — short for Renewable Energy Linked Intelligent Compute.
RELIC is a modular system installed directly at solar generation sites, drawing on power that would otherwise be curtailed or too cheap to sell back to the grid. According to SiliconANGLE, the system can be installed in about an hour and energized for customers in as little as six weeks, compared with the years it typically takes to bring a conventional data center online and secure a grid interconnection. Running natively on the direct current that solar panels already produce, RELIC also skips the transformers and long-haul transmission cables that add cost and delay to traditional builds, cutting non-compute infrastructure costs by roughly 85%, the company says.
"Every solar plant is a latent data center. The power is already there, sitting idle while AI labs wait years for grid connections that may never come."
William Layden, CEO, Rune
A Bet That Power, Not Chips, Is the Bottleneck
The wager reflects a broader industry constraint: U.S. data-center electricity demand is projected to more than double, from 192 terawatt-hours in 2024 to 464 terawatt-hours by 2028, even as interconnection queues for new grid capacity stretch on for years in many regions. Rune has already deployed a RELIC installation at a 200-megawatt solar facility in Texas and says it has more than 80 megawatts of power under contract and over a gigawatt in development.
Rune is one of several venture-backed entrants racing to pair AI compute with renewable generation rather than wait on utilities, a strategy investors argue sidesteps both permitting delays and the local opposition that has stalled data-center projects elsewhere. Chief Executive William Layden, who previously worked in hydroelectric power and at SoftBank Energy, and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Varun Palivela, a semiconductor veteran of Qualcomm and NUVIA, say the company plans next to extend RELIC to wind farms.
