According to Wikipedia[1], Intel set aside "$300m over 3-4 years" to invest in Ultrabooks, so $100m/year. Contrast that to ~$8B they spend on R&D each year[2]. So it was a relatively small bet for them.

I'm not saying tech companies never invest in anything outside of their core products. It's just often those projects are given low internal priority precisely because their (presumed) impact to the bottom line will be small.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook [2] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/r_and_d_expense

edit: typos