The are two fundamentally different kinds of private research funding. (Let's drop the &D part, because that's mostly unrelated to the kind of research we are t

The are two fundamentally different kinds of private research funding. (Let's drop the &D part, because that's mostly unrelated to the kind of research we are talking about.) Charitable foundations and similar organizations are not that different from government agencies funding research. They act on a smaller scale, because rich people are not actually that rich. Then there are companies that do research as part of their business. They are typically much better funded and much narrower in scope than government-funded research. They are also biased towards topics that can be reasonably expected to work and produce economic value within the next 10-20 years. This kind of research is inherently inefficient due to redundant efforts. Instead of making their findings public, companies often keep the results secret, forcing their competitors to waste money on reinventing the wheel.