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.
