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.

Episode recorded on Jan 27, 2026 (Published on Feb 17, 2026)

In this episode we cover: 

• (0:00) Intro
• (3:19) An overview of Rune
• (7:15) How energy flows and gets los in today’s power stack
• (10:50) Clipping: the hidden inefficiency in solar
• (14:17) Curtailment: why the grid rejects clean energy
• (20:47) Starting with Bitcoin before scaling to AI workloads
• (25:50) Which compute loads can run interruptibly
• (27:26) Rune’s business model and value to power producers
• (33:16) Where Rune operates and who’s backing it
• (36:10) Why modular, DC-native design matters for scale

Links:

• William Layden on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-layden
• Rune: https://www.rune.energy/

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant