Two well-funded U.S. fusion energy startups have chosen production homes: Realta Fusion will build its "Realta Forge" headquarters and R&D facility at OM Station, a redeveloped former Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wisconsin, while Inertia Enterprises has opened a 50,000-square-foot laser and fusion-target factory in Livermore, California. Together the moves signal fusion's shift from lab experiments toward industrial-scale manufacturing.
Realta plants its flag in Wisconsin
Madison-based Realta Fusion has locked in state and city commitments worth up to $55 million to redevelop more than 200,000 square feet of vacant OM Station space for offices, manufacturing and research. The package includes an estimated $37.5 million in Wisconsin sales and use tax exemptions, up to $15 million in performance-based Enterprise Zone tax credits and $2.8 million in tax increment financing from the City of Madison. Realta expects to create more than 500 jobs at the facility and plans to break ground on its second-generation magnetic mirror fusion prototype, Hammir, before year-end.
Realta spun out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2022 and this month showed direct energy conversion at its Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM), extracting electricity from charged fusion particles to light a bulb. CEO Kieran Furlong said the company spent nearly two years searching sites in Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and Tennessee before landing in Madison.
Inertia stands up a laser factory near Livermore
Inertia Enterprises' new Livermore headquarters is a former factory outfitted to house what the company describes as the world's first fusion fuel target factory and its most advanced high-energy laser system. Inertia was founded in August 2025 to commercialize the laser inertial confinement fusion approach that achieved ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility in 2022, and this year raised $450 million in Series A funding. CEO Jeff Lawson said the facility went "from an empty, derelict factory floor to a frontier laser and fusion target facility in a mere six months."
Fusion moves from physics to production
The double announcement follows a run of momentum in U.S. fusion. Xcimer Energy earlier this year unveiled its Athena laser fusion power plant preconceptual design with DOE support, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems continues to supply high-temperature superconducting magnets to Realta. With Inertia scaling laser and fuel-target manufacturing and Realta preparing to build Hammir, private fusion is now committing bricks-and-mortar capex where it once lived only inside academic vacuum chambers.
Reporting based on coverage from the American Nuclear Society, WPR, PR Newswire, WisBusiness, Fusion Energy Base and Design and Development Today.