IKVM is slower than JVM and more error prone, so for big class of work why bother if you can directly use the JVM ?
Yes and I completely agree, but a slow AKKA seems easier than rewriting if from scratch in C#. e.g. seemed a smaller investment to me.
Akka.net wasnt really intended to be a complete port from the start, it was a weekend hack from my part that then grew into what later became akka.net when Aaron joined (akka.actor and akka.remote first).
Then things took off and it got a life of its own.
Now there is an entire sub-ecosystem growing around it in terms of persistence providers, testkits and dependency injection lib integrations.
AWESOME to see :)