I understand the reasoning behind wanting LLVM but targeting x86 first actually makes a lot of sense. It differentiates this project from Silverlight, JavaFX, and Flash for one thing. But going as low-level as possible is a great way to start the platform and ensure that it's secure and free from cruft at the very bottom. It gives them a solid basis to begin adding on the abstraction layers like LLVM and binaries for other CPUs without settling on any one technology.