At least in Germany (where I am from), but I believe also other places in Europe, it is pretty common to do a PhD that is partially or fully funded by some comp

At least in Germany (where I am from), but I believe also other places in Europe, it is pretty common to do a PhD that is partially or fully funded by some company. For example Apple, Bosch was looking for ML PhD students at my university. Basically many larger companies, which might not come immediately to mind like Roche, Bosch, Merck, BMW, obscure Sawmill manufacturers, have some interest in Machine Learning. Only for a subset of them I would really call this research and as I said in most cases you either need to be exceptionally talented with connections or you are probably better off having a PhD.