GraalVM builds upon the research done previously at Sun with MaximeVM [0] and SquawVM [1] (SunSPOTs [2] before arduinos were even an idea).

The Graal folks have their own agenda servicing Oracle DB, Oracle serverless, and less trying to replace the OpenJDK.

See this interview with Thomas Wuerthinger, the founder and project lead of GraalVM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naO1Up63I7Q

Apparently there tends to exist some attrition between both teams, now OpenJDK is having a Python and JavaScript support project, but by integrating CPython and V8, not by reaching out to GraalVM, Project Detroit.

https://openjdk.org/projects/detroit/

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_Virtual_Machine

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squawk_virtual_machine

[2] - https://sunspotdev.org/ (site still up, go figure)

[2] - https://jug-karlsruhe.de/assets/slides/sunspot-jugKa.pdf (technical overview)