To quote the announcement email which zacs posted earlier:

  This work was pursued independently of my duties as 
  a HP Labs researcher, and without the knowledge of 
  others. I made several unsuccessful attempts these 
  past two years trying other combinations of ideas 
  before I began this work.

So based off this solitary data point, it seems that while they might hire the brains it doesn't necessarily follow that they have free rein to work on esoteric "non-profitable" projects.