A site that represents Madison’s industrial past will get new life as the host of a new research and development facility aimed at helping power the future.
After a multi-state search, Realta Fusion selected OM Station, the site of the former Oscar Mayer plant and headquarters, to be its new corporate headquarters and research and development facility, the company announced Wednesday.
Realta Fusion is a Madison startup that formed in 2022, spinning out of work being done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The company has approximately 50 employees in Madison and expects to eventually employ more than 600 people.
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Realta plans to make $67 million worth of improvements to the portion of site that it will occupy, while the company’s equipment costs are estimated to be more than $500 million, according to a presentation from the city of Madison.
To support the project, the company said it secured up to $55 million in incentives from both the state of Wisconsin and the city of Madison. That includes an estimated $37.5 million in sales and use tax exemptions, up to $15 million in state tax credits and $2.8 million in tax increment financing from the city, the company says.
Before the end of the year, the company plans to break ground on the R&D facility, where it will build its prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine.
This is the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s prototype plasma fusion device, known as WHAM or the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror. Photo courtesy of Realta Fusion
Fusion generates power by fusing the atoms together to convert a small amount of mass into a large amount of energy. But the technology is still years away from being commercially viable, with Realta targeting the early to mid-2030s for its first commercial activities.
Realta CEO Kieran Furlong said development incentives, local research expertise and a strong manufacturing base helped make the Badger State the best place for the company to continue growing.
“Wisconsin has all the jigsaw pieces,” he told WPR. “We’ve got the leading R&D coming out of places like University of Wisconsin-Madison. We’ve got the manufacturing know-how in the core industrial centers around southeastern Wisconsin and up in the Fox River Valley. Wisconsin really has a chance to own the future of the fusion industry.”
A fence surrounds the former Oscar Mayer plant Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
In addition to incentives, Furlong said the company also wanted to find a site with existing office and industrial buildings that could be repurposed and sites with strong electricity infrastructure and power availability. OM Station checked all those boxes.
He said one of the biggest concerns when evaluating Wisconsin was its smaller talent pool compared with more populous states, but the strength of UW-Madison helped ease those concerns.
“There’s already a wellspring of talent there in our respective fields of plasma physics, fusion, nuclear engineering and so on,” he said. “We’ve got that local pipeline of talent and know-how, and, so far, we’ve been very successful at attracting people to relocate to Wisconsin.”
A plaque memorializing Oscar Mayer is displayed outside the former plant Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
The project will bring new life to a property that has sat largely vacant since Kraft Heinz closed Oscar Mayer operations there in 2017. The site served as a major manufacturing hub in Madison for nearly a century, helping shape the neighborhoods that grew around it.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city hopes Realta’s project can be a catalyst for additional development at the OM Station site.
“Realta is proposing to take a significant chunk of the building and repurpose it for their use,” she said. “Having them there is a major attractor for businesses in their supply chain and other fusion-related businesses, and there is more room on that site that other businesses may be able to move into.”
This is a rendering of “The Realta Forge,” the company’s planned research and development facility in Madison. At OM Station, the former Oscar Mayer plant and headquarters, it will host Realta Fusion’s prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine. Photo courtesy of Realta Fusion
State, local incentives help put Wisconsin over the top
Officials say incentives, both at the state and local level, helped Wisconsin land the project and beat out other states, like New Jersey, Tennessee and Illinois.
In May, Realta was in the process of seeking financial incentives for sites in both Madison and Illinois, according to a memo from the city of Madison.
Madison is offering Realta $2.8 million in tax increment financing tied to the creation or retention of 200 jobs and a $53 million boost in property value, according to city documents. TIF payments would be broken across six installments as the company hits job creation and property value benchmarks.
The jobs listed in city documents have annual salaries ranging from $80,000 to more than $180,000.
It’s the first time Madison has offered a tax increment financing for job creation in nearly a decade.
The city previously used jobs tax increment financing to support Exact Sciences in 2017 and 2018, according to the city’s presentation.
“There’s always risk when we look to invest tax increment financing dollars, and that is something that we evaluate very carefully,” Rhodes-Conway said. “It’s part of why we’ve structured the deal to be a post-performance payment model, so they have to make their investment first, and they have to show that they’ve created jobs first.”
A “no trespassing” sign is displayed near the former Oscar Mayer plant Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
On the state’s end, Realta estimates that it will receive $37.5 million in sales and use tax exemptions. Earlier this year, Gov. Tony Evers signed bipartisan legislation making Wisconsin the first in the nation to offer such incentives for fusion projects.
In a statement, Evers said commercial fusion is “getting closer every day” and that the partnership between Realta and the state “will only strengthen that work.”
“We are thrilled to help Realta grow its science and engineering expertise, build up its technology, and bring the economic benefits of fusion home to Wisconsin,” the governor stated.
Realta said it expects to receive up to $15 million in state tax credits. Those credits generally require companies to meet investment and job creation requirements in order to receive the incentive.
But Sam Rikkers, chief operating officer for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., declined to comment on those numbers, saying the agency did provide the company with a letter of support but the contract was still being finalized.
Rikkers also said the company’s decision to continue growing in Wisconsin reflects the decades of investment in fusion at UW-Madison and recent state efforts.
“Wisconsin is in pole position on the fusion industry and the fusion sector,” Rikkers said. “I really believe we’ll be leading this sector and all the things that come with it, not for a couple years, but for decades to come.”
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