Why Wisconsin is suddenly on every list
Three things arrived at once. Land at campus scale on the old Foxconn site in Racine County, already graded and already entitled. Water, which the Lake Michigan shoreline has and much of the American west does not. And a utility willing to build generation against a load that had not arrived yet.
The fourth thing is Chicago. Milwaukee is about ninety miles north of it, close enough to be inside the same latency envelope for most workloads and far enough to sit on different transmission and a different state's regulation. For an organisation with a primary site in Chicago, that combination is worth more than any figure in the announced table below.
It is worth being blunt about what the buildout does and does not mean for a buyer. The megawatts in the news belong to Microsoft, Vantage and Meta, and all three are self-builds. Not one of them adds a square foot anyone can lease. Strip them out and Wisconsin is a modest, long-established enterprise and network market concentrated in two cities. That smaller market is the one this page is about, and the campuses matter to it mainly through the utility bill.
The names on the filings are not the names on the buildings
This is the market where our permit collector is most obviously useful, and the reason is that keyword searching would have missed most of it. Of the three filings we hold, one is Microsoft under its own name. One is WI-1, which is Vantage. And one is DEGAS LLC in Beaver Dam, which is Meta, and which no search for a hyperscaler's name would ever have returned.
That pattern is documented rather than incidental. At least four Wisconsin communities signed non-disclosure agreements with data center developers before their projects were public. If you are doing diligence on a site, a corridor or a utility here, work from filings and shell companies rather than from press releases, and assume the entity named on a permit is not the company behind it.
Buying power in a state that never deregulated
Wisconsin did not open its retail electricity market. There is no competitive supplier to shop and no wholesale price a contract can track: the utility serving the building is the one you buy from, at a rate schedule the Public Service Commission approves. Which utility depends entirely on where you are. We Energies serves Milwaukee, Racine County and Port Washington. Madison Gas and Electric serves Madison. Alliant Energy serves Beaver Dam.
That regulated structure is why the campuses above reach your bill even though you cannot lease them. In May 2025 the Public Service Commission approved more than $1.5 billion of new We Energies gas generation, an 1,100 MW plant at Oak Creek and a 128 MW plant in Paris, against anticipated demand. The utility has since sought to add close to three gigawatts. Meanwhile American Transmission Co has proposed a $1.4 billion, roughly ninety mile transmission project to serve Port Washington, and in August 2026 the Commission ordered that application restarted because regulators and the public could not see what they were being asked to approve.
None of that is a reason to avoid Wisconsin. It is a reason to ask, on a long term, what your operator expects its delivered cost to do and whether your contract passes utility increases straight through to you.
The tax exemption is real, and it is a certificate rather than a status
Wisconsin exempts property used to build, operate or renovate a qualified data center from sales and use tax, and the exemption is unusually broad: it reaches servers, parts, cooling systems, security systems, water conservation systems and the electricity itself. The qualifying investment scales down with county size, at $150 million over five years in counties above 100,000 people, $100 million between 50,000 and 100,000, and $50 million below that.
The part that matters to a tenant is procedural. The exemption applies only to a data center the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has certified, and only from the certification date it issues. So the question is not whether Wisconsin has an exemption. It is whether this building is inside a certified qualified data center, what its certification date is, and whether the benefit is reflected in what you are being quoted.
Ask whether the capacity being offered is energised at the building today or waiting on a utility upgrade, and get the date in writing. In a state where one campus has triggered a ninety mile transmission project and a second has triggered new gas generation, the queue for new service is set by construction schedules and regulatory proceedings that no contract clause shortens. An operator with energised capacity is unaffected by any of it. An operator waiting on an upgrade is standing in a line whose length is being argued about in front of the Commission.
Three do. The interconnection layer is the strongest for a buyer and comes from PeeringDB, which the network operators maintain themselves, so every row links to the building's own public entry. The announced layer is here and is collected by hand, and every figure in it belongs to a campus nobody can lease. The permit layer is here and is small but unusually well aimed: three filings, three counties, and two of the three name a hyperscaler once you know what the shell company is. The fourth is not here: our verified facility inventory does not extend to Wisconsin, so this page carries no building count and no zero standing in for one. See how we verify capacity for what each collection proves.
Who is actually plugged in across Wisconsin
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain, so every row below links to the building's own public entry.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 17 | Registered in PeeringDB across Wisconsin, by 15 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 14 | 3 carry no network presence, which usually means single tenant or simply unregistered |
| Network presences | 53 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 3 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 14 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 25% | Network 222 holds 13 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | Network 222 | Fiore Companies | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | 324 E Wisconsin | Wells Interconnection | 0 | 2 |
| 6 | 5Nines Data | 5Nines Data / Network222 | 0 | 1 |
| 5 | TSR Solutions Data Center | TSR Solutions, Inc. | 0 | 2 |
| 5 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 1 | 0 |
| 4 | EdgeConneX Madison (EDCMAD01) | EdgeConneX Inc. | 0 | 2 |
| 3 | US Signal WI02 - Madison | OneNeck IT Solutions LLC | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | 612 W Main | Hoyos Consulting LLC | 0 | 1 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
What has been announced in Wisconsin
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below was read on the page it links to.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.3 GW | Vantage Data Centers | Port Washington campus, Ozaukee County | Four figures circulate for this campus and they measure different things, so the row carries the narrowest one that is a request on the record. Vantage is seeking a 1.3 GW grid connection for the first phase. Vantage has separately said it is paying for a 2,000 MW buildout including wind and solar while needing about 1,400 MW. Facility listings describe four single-storey buildings totalling 902 MW across 2.5 million square feet, due in 2028. And a long-range plan of 3.5 GW has been reported, which Vantage has acknowledged without giving local officials the detail. The city approved an $8 billion development agreement, and OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage have announced $15 billion for the campus. American Transmission Co has proposed a $1.4 billion, roughly 90 mile transmission project to serve it, and in August 2026 the Public Service Commission ordered that application restarted. None of this is leasable colocation. The grid connection Vantage has asked for, which is the first phase and not the long-range plan |
| 900 MW | Microsoft | Mount Pleasant, the former Foxconn site in Racine County | Microsoft says the maximum electricity need for phase one is 400 MW, about 7.5 percent of We Energies' maximum capacity, and that across both phases the site will use about 900 MW, roughly 16 percent. The 900 MW covers the $3.3 billion first campus, which opened in 2026, and the $4 billion second one. It does not cover what came next: in January 2026 Mount Pleasant approved site plans for fifteen further buildings across two new campuses, near Durand Avenue and along International Drive, covering nearly nine million square feet at a taxable value reported above $13 billion. No megawatt figure has been published for those fifteen. So 900 MW is a floor for this site rather than a total, and the reason the row carries it anyway is that it is the figure Microsoft itself stated. Microsoft's stated electricity need across the two campuses it has already committed to, which excludes the fifteen buildings approved since |
Wisconsin is now one of the largest data center buildouts in the country and almost none of it is colocation. Every megawatt above belongs to a company building for itself. The third filing in our permit record, DEGAS LLC in Beaver Dam, is a Meta shell company: Meta has said it will invest more than $1 billion in a roughly 700,000 square foot campus on a 520 acre site there, its 26th in the United States, expected online in 2027, and it has published no megawatt figure, so it has no row. That naming pattern is worth knowing here. At least four Wisconsin communities signed non-disclosure agreements with data center developers, and two of the three buildings our collector found were filed under names that tell you nothing: DEGAS LLC is Meta, and WI-1 is Vantage. What a colocation buyer can actually reach in this state is the seventeen interconnected buildings below, concentrated in Madison and Milwaukee, and they are a different market entirely from the campuses in the table above. Read the reporting.
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
What the public construction record shows, and what it will not tell you
Three filings is a small number and it is the wrong thing to measure this collection by. Our Wisconsin permit layer comes from the federal air facility register, which records sites holding an air permit rather than applications as they are filed, so it carries no dates and it will never show a market's tempo. What it does is name buildings, and here it named three that matter: the Microsoft campus at Mount Pleasant, Vantage in Port Washington, and a Meta shell company in Beaver Dam that nothing else would have surfaced.
Air permits at the Microsoft campus in Mount Pleasant, Vantage in Port Washington and Beaver Dam. Every figure below is a count of filings we collected ourselves, and every row links to the record it came from.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filings we track | 3 | Deduplicated. One source, no dated record to no dated record |
| Distinct addresses | 3 | Separate sites in the record, not separate buildings |
| Operators we can name | 2 | 2 of 3 filings name a recognizable operator. The rest name an engineer, a builder or a holding company |
| Filings with no date published | 3 | The source publishes the facility, not the filing date |
Operators appearing by name: Microsoft (1), Vantage Data Centers (1).
Collected from EPA ECHO air facility records for Wisconsin. A permit proves that construction is happening. It does not prove that space is available, and no public filing anywhere discloses what is contractible at a named building. That answer comes from an operator call, which is the part we do by hand. See how we verify capacity.
Where the market actually is
Madison
The densest interconnection in the state and the busiest single building in it. Network222, 5Nines, EdgeConneX, the university and SupraNet all sit here, and between them they carry most of the state's exchange presence. A network-led requirement in Wisconsin starts in Madison, which surprises people who assume it starts in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee
The larger commercial market and the second interconnection cluster, with carrier-hotel style stock downtown plus TierPoint and Data Holdings. Fewer network presences than Madison but closer to the corporate base, and the obvious answer for an enterprise requirement with people in the metro.
Racine, Ozaukee and Dodge counties
Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam, which is where every megawatt in the announced table sits and where none of it is leasable. There is no multi-tenant supply in any of the three and no interconnection listing in any of them. Treat this corridor as information about the utility and about local politics, not as inventory.
Green Bay, the Fox Valley and out-state
Single buildings in De Pere, Menasha, Marshfield and Fond du Lac, mostly one or two operators with a network apiece. Real, and worth knowing about if you have plant or clinics in those places, but not a market you would shop from outside the state.
When Wisconsin is right, and when it is the wrong choice
It is right when your business is here. For a Wisconsin manufacturer, health system, insurer or university, the state has established enterprise buildings, a working interconnection cluster in Madison, a tax exemption that reaches electricity, and staff who can reach the site. It is also a credible second site for a Chicago primary: close enough to run, far enough to be independent, and on a different regulator.
It is the wrong choice if you are buying on the strength of the headlines. The gigawatts in this state belong to three companies building for themselves, and treating them as market supply is the single largest mistake available here. Read them as pressure on generation and transmission, which is real and will reach your bill, rather than as capacity coming to market.
It is also the wrong choice if you need large steps of growth in one hall or the deepest possible interconnection. Fifty-three network presences across the whole state is a working ecosystem and not a dense one, and Chicago is ninety miles away with an order of magnitude more of it. A requirement that turns on network depth should be measured against Chicago first, and against Minneapolis after that.
Ask which utility serves the building and get the rate schedule, because with no retail choice that document is the cost basis of everything you will be quoted. Ask whether the building sits inside a WEDC-certified qualified data center, what the certification date is, and how the exemption is reflected in your price. Ask whether your contract passes through utility rate increases, and read that clause against the generation and transmission being built for other people's campuses. Ask for energised capacity, not design capacity, with a date. If interconnection is the reason you are here, compare Madison and Milwaukee explicitly rather than assuming the larger city wins. And if a proposal leans on Microsoft, Vantage or Meta as evidence of the market, ask what any of those campuses changes about the building you would occupy. The honest answer is your electricity bill and nothing else.