Yann LeCun(@ylecun):The amount of basic research done in industry is nowhere near the amount done in universities. At various times, there have been industry labs that had fundamental research activities and have made important scientific contributions. Examples in information technology include Bell Labs, IBM Research, Xerox PARC, GE, Phillips, NEC, and several other. That disappeared in the 1990s. Microsoft Research picked up the torch in the 2000s, followed (to some extent) by Google and then Meta (for about a decade until recently). But their innovations almost always built on top of academic work, and certainly profited from the whole research ecosystem.

2026.07.30 12:07

The amount of basic research done in industry is nowhere near the amount done in universities. At various times, there have been industry labs that had fundamental research activities and have made important scientific contributions. Examples in information technology include Bell Labs, IBM Research, Xerox PARC, GE, Phillips, NEC, and several other. That disappeared in the 1990s. Microsoft Research picked up the torch in the 2000s, followed (to some extent) by Google and then Meta (for about a decade until recently). But their innovations almost always built on top of academic work, and certainly profited from the whole research ecosystem.

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