R&D in pharma/biotech can be like this. But there are fewer and fewer free-wheeling R&D groups in industry these days, probably because people saw Xerox PARC and thought it was a waste of money (a single invention at PARC paid for all of PARC).

>But there are fewer and fewer free-wheeling R&D groups in industry these days

This was true going back to the 80s. If anything there's been something of an uptick in companies with money to burn.

OpenAI seems like it from the outside.

I recently joined and was shocked how much freedom they give senior engineers. It's really different than most big companies.