Data center hardware maker Rune today announced that it has closed a $40 million funding round led by Spark Capital.

The company, which is incorporated as Liitto Technology Inc., also debuted its first product. RELIC, or Renewable Energy Linked Intelligent Compute, is a computing module optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. It’s designed to be installed on the premises of solar farms.

One of RELIC’s main selling points is its price. Building a large-scale AI data center requires companies to deploy not only servers but also a significant amount of auxiliary infrastructure. According to Rune, RELIC cuts the cost of that infrastructure by 85%.

The first way the system lowers hardware bills is by reducing the need for long-haul power transmission lines. Such cables represent a major expense for AI companies. OpenAI Group PBC, for example, expects to spend $4.2 billion on power transmission hardware in connection with its Ohio data center buildout. By contrast, RELIC modules don’t require long-haul cables because they run near the photovoltaic cells that power them.

The second way Rune cuts costs is by reducing the need for transformers. Those are machines that switch direct current, or DC, to alternative current, or AC. A direct current is a stream of electrons that flows in one direction. An alternating current, in contrast, reverses its direction a few dozen times per second.

Solar farms generate DC power. They route the electricity to transformers, which turn it into AC power. That switch is necessary because it makes it easier to transmit energy over long-haul power lines. Once the AC power arrives at an AI data center, it’s turned back into DC power and distributed to servers.

The fact that Rune’s RELIC systems don’t require long-term power transmission removes the need to switch from DC to AC and back. Servers can simply consume the DC power generated by solar panels. That means RELIC customers don’t need to buy transformers.

Rune says its technology also provides other benefits. Utilities lower the output of their solar panels when supply exceeds demand. As a result, some of the solar panels’ power generation capacity goes unused. According to Rune, RELIC can harness that unused capacity for AI processing.

“Every solar plant is a latent data center,” said Rune co-founder and Chief Executive Officer William Layden. “The power is already there, sitting idle while AI labs wait years for grid connections that may never come.”

Each RELIC module ships with up to 1,024 graphics cards, cooling equipment and custom power management components. Rune claims that the system takes about an hour to set up. Customers can start running AI workloads within a few weeks, which is far faster than the years needed to build a standard data center.

Rune says it has deployed RELIC on the premises of a 200-megawatt solar facility in Texas. Today’s funding round will help it grow its market presence. In particular, the company reportedly plans to expand its focus beyond solar power plants to wind farms.

Photo: Rune