Not always. There has been commercial molecular modeling code since the 70-80's, but the number of players has noticeably shrunk over the years. The whole market might be 50-100mil/year and as pg said there's no exit strategy for something that small. It's hindered by a perceived lack of impact and various scientific problems yet to be solved. There's also a disconnect between data held proprietary by the customers vs. commercial and academic developers and researchers.
And bioinformatics is (or at least was) different in that there were good, open-source alternatives which made it financially impossible to to sustain a commercial effort. There are players but I don't think they've done better than molecular modeling. Hard to compete with free and good.
The business needs some real scientific breakthroughs to jump forward. Currently, everything can be coded well but the tools are too blunt.
And bioinformatics is (or at least was) different in that there were good, open-source alternatives which made it financially impossible to to sustain a commercial effort. There are players but I don't think they've done better than molecular modeling. Hard to compete with free and good.
The business needs some real scientific breakthroughs to jump forward. Currently, everything can be coded well but the tools are too blunt.