It has a nice homepage and good examples but what would a language like this provide over something like Kotlin? Also, I had to dig down into the homepage to find out that it compiled down to JVM byte code.

Well, you could turn it around since Ceylon is older than Kotlin ;)

There's not a huge difference between the syntaxes, but IMHO Ceylon integrates better with the general JVM ecosystem. It has an excellent module system and works well with OSGi too. Ceylon + Vert.x is a powerful combo.

I should have done my research. I assumed since Kotlin has large support it has been around longer. Thanks!

I think Ceylon is about a year older, so it's not much. Both arose out of dissatisfaction with Java 7 and below. Whether Java 8 has done enough to stem that, idk. IMHO, nice though they are, there's not enough in the other languages to justify changing ... yet. Javac must be one of the most battle-hardened, mission-critical bits of code in existence.