They are not similar types of research. It's like asking why Knuth doesn't do systems research for a social network or advertising company.

Eddy's lab builds the tooling and concepts that everyone else uses throughout the field in foundation upon which new discoveries are built.

There's no commercial funding for that sort of work, and I'm honestly shocked at the lack of understanding of this is Silicon Valley. Nobody at Google or Meta or anywhere is given free reign to build the future of science of even computer science, all activity there is for the express commercial benefit of the company, exactly as it should be.

I see what you're saying, and think it makes sense.

Anecdotally, Apple (thinking different(ly)?) ran at least two pure research inner groups that i was in contact with when I was in engineering at Apple; to your point, I have no sense of impact on profits from doing that.