That was true about the Wolfram Physics Project. But now, the Wolfram Institute will compete for research funding, as he explains in the blog post. In fact, this is the whole point of creating the Institute: WPP couldn't scale up as it was eating too much of his own money, and he believes he needs to scale this up to actually bring the work to fruition.

> So far we’ve basically been incubating the Wolfram Institute within our existing organization, with me effectively footing the bill. But as we launch the full Wolfram Institute we need a larger scale of support, and we’re counting on having a network of people and organizations to provide that.