Runware Wants to Build AI Data Centers on a Production Line
AI infrastructure company Runware plans to assemble modular data centers on a production line, much as carmakers build vehicles. It told TechCrunch it wants to scale production at its Romania-based factory to 30 megawatts of data center capacity per day by 2028, or nearly 1 gigawatt per month.
The company unveiled its Sonic Inference Pod months ago. The pod is a modular data center built in a factory and shipped ready to install. Runware has two factories: one it has used for a few years, and a second it started building this year. The second is expected to be finished within months and to go online early next year.
Pods in 48 hours
CEO and co-founder Flaviu Radulescu said Runware aims to bring a pod online within 48 hours. That time covers installation and set-up, not the build. A pod once took three weeks to build. The company says it will soon take one day.
Customers can provide their own site or ask Runware to find one. Runware will provide spare parts if components fail. They can rent compute from Runware or supply their own GPUs and pay a monthly fee for the pods and operations. Power and internet are charged separately.
The pods have a standard design but can be configured to customer requirements and the latest GPU chips. Chips can take a long time to arrive after they are ordered, which works in Runware's favor. “Our pod delivery times are also shorter than current GPU lead times, giving us time to adapt the infrastructure to the hardware being ordered,” Radulescu said.
Radulescu said Runware has received $1 billion in committed interest for the pods since it began offering them to outside customers a month ago. That represents over 20 megawatts. Its site pipeline covers 397 megawatts, with potential to expand to 1.2 gigawatts.
Money and risks
Runware has raised more than $60 million to date. It plans to raise a Series B, but for now it is finishing the factory with the $50 million Series A it raised last December.
TechCrunch notes that these are all plans and that execution is the test. It points to the electric vehicle startup Arrival, once valued at over $13 billion, which struggled to mass-produce vehicles cost-effectively. Radulescu said Runware’s cost structure is “very different”. The company has brought in a plant manager from the automotive industry.
Some parts, such as pumps and fans, come from Germany. The company still depends on Nvidia for networking. Prefabricated pods are also sold by Crusoe and Schneider Electric, but Runware says it can ship faster.
On energy, Radulescu said the pods need only power and an internet connection. They use closed-loop liquid cooling with air-cooled radiators, so they need no water connection. The sites are much smaller than those used by hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google, and typically already have power. The pods run “completely silent up to temperatures of 86 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said. The company aims to have renewables as its main energy source.
Runware will expand to the U.S. and other regions after the new factory opens. Radulescu said modular systems will soon become “the standard for large AI deployment”.
Source: TechCrunch