Many companies will work with one or more partners on projects.
However, collaborative research can be a minefield especially if
care is not taken at the start of a collaboration to work out how
any generated intellectual property will be owned by the parties.
Some collaborations will start quite informally, but even at this
stage its important to establish who will own the IP as any
disagreements are likely to get worse once IP has been
generated.
In an article for the DeadCatLiveCat quantum blog,
https://deadcatlivecat.com/articles/entangled-ip.php, my colleague,
Rayyan Mughal, from Marks and Clerk Law explains many of the
pitfalls.
It is essential reading for anyone embarking on a collaboration.