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.