Deep tech fields have a more complex relationship with academia than other industries. Engineers often need license to test ideas that may not see adoption for years, or require tens of millions to build-out.

A "research" arm is exactly this license, although it comes at the cost of potentially killing innovation in the rest of the company.

I'm not sure what you think "research lab" means? As I mentioned in the article, we look at IBM Research (Almaden) and Microsoft Research as inspiration.

Many database companies have research labs. It allows you to explore ideas, unorthodox concepts, and parts of the design space that may never be reflected in an actual product. Or to figure out how to solve specific hard problems that you come across with neither a good solution nor proof of impossibility in literature.

This is essential for a company that wants to stay on the frontier of database tech.