Turning Wasted Renewable Power into AI Compute with Rune

Turning Wasted Renewable Power into AI Compute with Rune

From Inevitable by an MCJ podcast

February 17, 2026 · 39 min

About this episode

William Layden discusses how Rune's technology converts wasted renewable energy into usable compute power.

William Layden is Co-founder and CEO at Rune, a company building modular, behind-the-meter micro data centers that plug directly into solar and wind plants. These units operate on a fully electric, DC-to-DC architecture—bypassing the traditional grid and unlocking new economics for compute at renewable energy sites. In this episode of Inevitable, Layden explains how solar clipping and curtailment leave vast amounts of clean power stranded—and how Rune’s “RELIC” units turn that waste into usable compute. The conversation dives into DC architecture, Bitcoin as a beachhead market, and why traditional data centers are ill-suited to an era of distributed energy. Layden also unpacks why modular infrastructure may be the fastest path to deploying AI-scale compute at the edge of the energy transition.

People in this episode

Guest: William Layden

Topics covered

  • renewable energy
  • data centers
  • AI compute
  • solar power
  • wind power

Keywords

  • modular infrastructure
  • DC architecture
  • Bitcoin
  • energy transition

Mentioned in this episode

Products: RELIC units

More episodes of Inevitable

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Inevitable podcast page.