The headquarters are in Champaign, IL which is a small town with a much lower cost of living than Silicon Valley - so salaries are 20-40% lower than Automattic

The headquarters are in Champaign, IL which is a small town with a much lower cost of living than Silicon Valley - so salaries are 20-40% lower than Automattic or other comparable mid-sized firm. The main revenue driver is Mathematica (now called the Wolfram Language) which has several lucrative and long-standing academic licensing deals in place. I don't think the other endeavors (Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram cloud, book publishing) have been nearly as profitable. (I worked at Wolfram Research around a decade ago, when it was ~500 employees)