It's also very in-character for them to push for safer languages. They have quite successfully pushed C# over C++ for Windows software development, and pushed more and more static analysis into (c/c++) Windows driver development.

Yep. And at MS Research they've had various projects focusing on safe languages over the past couple decades (the time I've paid attention to it, probably more research preceding that).

It would make sense for MS to be interested in an existing, popular, relatively mature language that possessed many of the safety features their research languages have explored.

I think Joe Duffy mentioned somewhere that if Rust was around when they started Midori, that would have been their option instead of creating System C# (aka M#), but I cannot find that quote.