If so, then please provide more detailed information like what actions you take step by step, so I can try to reproduce it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me or anyone else that I know of.
Are you playing in a web browser or the windows desktop build?
I play the game via the following link:
https://haxor1337.itch.io/hardware-tycoon
To start out, you first have to do a company name + ceo name and click on what level of difficulty, which I choose medium. To begin the game, if you want to make any $$ whatsoever you first must research the 'chip', so click on chip an research begins. From there you have the chip with Dip 14 + 200 KHZ already to go. You can research Dip 18 or 400 KHZ ~or~ 10 UM. if you research 10 UM more of the technology tree should pop up. If you research 400 KHZ it progresses to 700 or whatever is the next speed up and so on so forth. For the remainder of the game, the game itself is not allowing the r/d 'tree' to progress, *SEE PICTURES*. What you see in the photo's is as far as I can get the R + D tree to go, period. It will not spawn the new technology after you research what is initially there.
Again, I have more $$ than I could possibly need + I have my budget set to 100%. Nothing will spawn in these boxes. It is a "bug" in the game if you play thru the above link using Windows 10. The first time I played this game, thru a different game service, I was able to progress thru the technology tree. But using the link above, I cannot progress any further on the technology tree than what you see in the picture's below. I've tried again and again and again and it wont let me.
Maybe you have played an older version of the game where research is unlocked in a different way. The point of Hardware Tycoon is to design and sell CPUs. Doing so allows you to make money and unlocks new research. You can refer to the guide.
You have to release CPUs in order for research to unlock.
Nothing will spawn until you release a CPU.
The budget is used to control the speed at which already unlocked technologies can be researched (as said here).
I assumed you were describing your steps in detail and saw no trace of actually releasing a CPU, hence my mistake.
Unfortunately, I am not able to reproduce the said issue in either Chrome, Edge or Explorer. I know of people playing in Opera, Safari and Firefox who did not have such problems with the game. Please let me know what browser you are using, so I can investigate further.
In the meantime, you can try clearing the browser cache, or simply downloading the windows release from the page you linked.