Modular data center developer Rune has launched a new modular compute system that is installed directly at solar generation sites.

Alongside the launch of the modular RELIC (Renewable Energy Linked Intelligent Compute) system, the company also announced that it raised $40 million in Series A funding, led by Spark Capital. The funding round brought the company’s total funding to $53.5m.

The system seeks to utilize wasted energy generated by solar plants, which the company claims can be up to 20 percent of the power they generate. According to Rune, the RELIC system can tap stranded electricity at the source, skipping the meter, the fees, and the grid infrastructure, which has been the primary bottleneck to data center buildouts across the country.

“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,” said William Layden, co-founder and CEO of Rune. “We built RELIC to close that gap with compute that’s online in days, powered by energy the grid was throwing away.”

The company said that it can install the solution within an hour and energize the data center module in as little as six weeks from signing the contract. The system also runs natively on direct current, meaning that the power generated by the solar does not need to be converted, eliminating AC conversion loss.

As part of the announcement, Rune revealed that it had installed a RELIC modular system at a solar facility in Texas. The exact facility was not disclosed.

“Demand for AI infrastructure is growing faster than it can be delivered. Rune deploys compute directly behind the meter at operating solar farms, converting clean power into rapidly scalable AI capacity,” said Santo Politi, founder and general partner of Spark Capital. “Every renewable asset in operation becomes a potential deployment site. Rune is the fastest path to new capacity we have seen.”

The company is based in California and was founded in 2023. The company was co-founded by William Layden and Varun Palivela.