If we're very lucky, Substrate VM will be released at some point, solving the startup time issues (and I believe many of the JIT issues, though less clear on that): http://lafo.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/papers/2013_JVMLanguageSummit...
The OMR project definitely looks interesting, but it doesn't seem to be actively developed (or perhaps the most recent commits are just not public yet). But if it works that well, then maybe there's no need, hah. Will have to try it out.