EPISODE · Jun 10, 2026 · 55 MIN
Ep. 251 - Rahul Kar: The Power We Need Is Already Here — We’re Just Not Using It
from The QTS Experience · host Dave McCall
We’re all chasing the same thing: safe, affordable, local power. Rahul Kar thinks we keep overlooking the easiest source of it — the power already sitting unused inside our own data centers. He’s convinced it’s hiding in plain sight, and he explains it with a kids’ story. Chapters: 00:00:00 From Boston to Redwood City: an engineer’s “five grand challenges” 00:06:53 Hammerhead AI for non-engineers: the two-toy-car rule 00:09:49 Why data centers run at 30–40% capacity (and why it’s by design) 00:15:41 Plain English: training vs. inferencing, and what a “token” is 00:21:06 Visibility first: how operators stop over-building 00:24:43 Turning stranded power into net-new, flexible workloads 00:28:14 Reliability, community trust, and being a good steward 00:31:56 Resilience by distribution: many sites, one brain (the 60-millisecond point) 00:35:07 From virtual power plants to AI orchestration 00:41:46 Small Is Beautiful vs. The Bitter Lesson: the tension driving the company 00:49:08 The “easy button,” and the one big idea: a utilization crisis, not a power crisis References and Links: Rahul Kar (guest) — LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rahulkar Hammerhead AI (guest’s company): hammerheadco.ai AutoGrid — Rahul Kar’s prior company; pioneered software-defined “virtual power plants” and was later acquired by Schneider Electric E. F. Schumacher, “Small Is Beautiful” (1973) — the economics-of-scale idea Rahul cites as a guiding influence Richard Sutton, “The Bitter Lesson” (2019) — the essay arguing that brute-force compute tends to beat hand-designed methods; Rahul calls Sutton “the father of reinforcement learning” Dean Nelson — named as a longtime champion of the do-more-with-what-you-have mindset; associated with Sun Microsystems Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) — the industry conference where David spoke on a panel Rahul attended Thank you for visiting our channel, be sure to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! For more information, go to https://www.QTSDataCenters.com Learn More about QTS Data Centers on the QTS YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/users/qtsdatacenters Think you have a great topic for a podcast or would like to schedule an interview with Dave? Send in your requests to [email protected]
What this episode covers
We’re all chasing the same thing: safe, affordable, local power. Rahul Kar thinks we keep overlooking the easiest source of it — the power already sitting unused inside our own data centers. He’s convinced it’s hiding in plain sight, and he explains it with a kids’ story. Chapters: 00:00:00 From Boston to Redwood City: an engineer’s “five grand challenges” 00:06:53 Hammerhead AI for non-engineers: the two-toy-car rule 00:09:49 Why data centers run at 30–40% capacity (and why it’s by design) 00:15:41 Plain English: training vs. inferencing, and what a “token” is 00:21:06 Visibility first: how operators stop over-building 00:24:43 Turning stranded power into net-new, flexible workloads 00:28:14 Reliability, community trust, and being a good steward 00:31:56 Resilience by distribution: many sites, one brain (the 60-millisecond point) 00:35:07 From virtual power plants to AI orchestration 00:41:46 Small Is Beautiful vs. The Bitter Lesson: the tension driving the company 00:49:08 The “easy button,” and the one big idea: a utilization crisis, not a power crisis References and Links: Rahul Kar (guest) — LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rahulkar Hammerhead AI (guest’s company): hammerheadco.ai AutoGrid — Rahul Kar’s prior company; pioneered software-defined “virtual power plants” and was later acquired by Schneider Electric E. F. Schumacher, “Small Is Beautiful” (1973) — the economics-of-scale idea Rahul cites as a guiding influence Richard Sutton, “The Bitter Lesson” (2019) — the essay arguing that brute-force compute tends to beat hand-designed methods; Rahul calls Sutton “the father of reinforcement learning” Dean Nelson — named as a longtime champion of the do-more-with-what-you-have mindset; associated with Sun Microsystems Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) — the industry conference where David spoke on a panel Rahul attended Thank you for visiting our channel, be sure to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! For more information, go to https://www.QTSDataCenters.com Learn More about QTS Data Centers on the QTS YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/users/qtsdatacenters Think you have a great topic for a podcast or would like to schedule an interview with Dave? Send in your requests to [email protected]
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Ep. 251 - Rahul Kar: The Power We Need Is Already Here — We’re Just Not Using It
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