The past decade of commercial research has failed to deliver the market successes needed to justify the premium. If you look at the biggest winners for pharmaceutical companies over the last decade (immunotherapy is the poster child), most of the research happened in academic labs. Cheaper to license the winners than do basic research yourself.

That's partially true (big pharma r&d has failed to deliver returns) but it is not true that most of the research happened in academic labs. Most of the research and early development happens in small companies. Most of the later stage development happens at big pharma companies

There's also a melding of those two - there's a big push for university researchers to do commercialization and start startups. Those small companies bear a lot of the risk of early stage development, and then get bought out when they get something promising.