However, financial firms are usually pretty against open academic research that would allow publication of papers. Many researchers truly value the ability to contribute to this field openly. Perhaps you are right and they will move to health.
We can see the next most lucrative fields where ML can be applied to by Alphabet's portfolio: * Calico, Verily - healthcare * Waymo - self driving cars
Another fields which comes to mind is robotics but Google liquidated their holdings related to this (Boston Dynamics) for some reasons.
I wish I knew more about this subject.
EDIT: those two links might give you a quick overview:
- https://spaceindividuals.com/space-companies
- https://spaceindividuals.com/space-jobs?country=Germany (over 50% of all listed, but not surprising, since the site's owner is in Germany as well)
Right now, I'm trying to map the industry myself.