Feels like an acquisition by Cloudflare/Vercel is a more likely exit scenario.. But then if we get an HHVM repeat and most of the benefits are just introduced into Node proper what's the real value to the aquirer? Aqui-hire? Deno has raised at least $25m though, and bun $7m..
I guess most startups fail so maybe there is just no answer.
HipHop Virtual Machine was created over a decade ago to address serious performance issues with PHP. This spurred(lit a fire?) serious efforts to address the issues in PHP proper. Over a rather short period of time PHP became performant enough that HHVM was sunsetted.
I think the history here would call into question the viability of Bun as a monetary investment. It may end up a net good for the ecosystem , but if the major benefits can just be incorporated back into Node proper what are the ROI prospects?
I thought you're original comment was saying something to the effect of "VCs funded HHVM, and this feels similar."
I'd only heard of HHVM in the context of Facebook, so I was surprised to read that (but I know Phabricator was another infrastructure company spun out of FB, so it seemed possible).
All valid ideas. But the involvement of VCs makes me wonder what kind of scale they're going to be expected to achieve and what will happen if they don't.