Didn't they hire the guy from BitC? BitC and ATS looked like the only interesting safe high perf languages for a while eh? Rust now has all the interest though.
Both BitC and ATS are big on formal program verification; rust has the interest because the number of people outside of academia that are interested in formal program verification is approximately zero.
It certainty felt like the blog posts about M# struck a zeitgeist nerve. I doubt it was ever really intended for release, though.