Isn't this mostly about java cold start costs? It might be that other people are optimizing for steady-state performance, not transient startup performance.
Java tooling taking up a lot of ram was a major motivation for me. I have done a lot of Scala as well. I don't think either Java or Scala in the real world beat go on performance for most cases. I don't doubt that in some cases jvm can do better but at least before Valhalla delivers all the promises, in real world, I am doubtful.
I have been a Java/Scala user almost for the majority of my career. I doubt I would pick jvm over golang going forward though. Also not having to deal with OOP is a plus.