Bell Labs paid his salary, but they paid it before C++ as much as after, and would have paid it without. If others had not taken up C++, he would have gone on to other things. C++'s unique contribution was the destructor, not adopted elsewhere until D and then Rust.

The contrast is against Sun spending literally $billions on Java puffery. Go has put a lot more support into Go, by that standard, but still barely $millions, if that.