Foundational software ... is too vague to be useful. Foundational for who, what, what domain? Not buying it ...
For any new arch, first there is an asm, then a C compiler.
Imagine i'm designing a new CPU, how difficult is it to have a direct rust-to-asm compiler for it? And the runtime?
So rust has its uses, but only for its targetted archs. Old or esoteric ones are sol.