He reportedly started his own business to be free to pursue his research program on his own terms, but you have to wonder if the bumpers of peer review and academic respectability aren't there for a reason.
The biggest complaint I’ve seen about his work, especially the new Wolfram Physics stuff is that it’s a theory without predictions. He pretty much exclusively talks about representing things we already know but in terms of his world of cellular automata and rewriting systems. Until it is applied to make a testable prediction, it’s not as much science as it is gratuitous programming, visualization, and grandiose claims.
It is impressive the sheer volume of self-congratulating text that he can produce. It’s quite hard to read since it spends nearly as much time talking about himself and how insightful he is as it does the technical topics. From the things I’ve read, there isn’t much of value buried in there.