Big oil arguably had some of the closest up until the past ~10 years. I think folks may not realize how large Exxon and Shell's pure R&D labs are/were. The ot

Big oil arguably had some of the closest up until the past ~10 years. I think folks may not realize how large Exxon and Shell's pure R&D labs are/were. The other majors have cut much more heavily on pure R&D in the past 20 years, but Exxon and Shell have always focused on pure research fairly heavily. It's been cut back in the past 10-ish years, but the R&D labs at both are still present. The breadth of it is significant, and while sure, it's geology, metallurgy, chemistry, etc (i.e. it's not what folks here likely think of as "tech"), it is fundamental research as opposed to applied research. A lot doesn't sure up under their R&D best because it's combined with internal consulting, but it's still a large group of folks hired to do r&d with diverse backgrounds. Those labs still exist today, but they're not as large as what they were in the recent past (e.g. 2010), and especially compared to their heyday in the 70's.