We've been using Rust in production for awhile now, specifically because of its combo of native speed and memory safety[1]. This bending of traditional tradeoffs has let us implement features that would have been otherwise impossible.
Interfacing with Ruby via its C APIs, we are able to do some pretty crazy stuff, like sample memory allocations in production with imperceptible overhead[2]. Most importantly, we can do it without fear of segfaulting our customers' servers.
It's really great to see people other than low-level bitbangers being added to the core team. In this case, having a production user and someone focused on new users demonstrates the Rust team's commitment to building a functionally diverse community.
Lastly, I think opening up the core team to a wide coalition of companies is the right way to build a robust, long-lived open source project. Yehuda talked a little bit about this in his Indie OSS talk[2]. There are several "pathogens" that can affect open source projects, and the more diverse the distribution of power, the more likely you are to be immune to these pathogens.
1: http://blog.skylight.io/bending-the-curve-writing-safe-fast-...