HHVM as you mentioned lost momentum when PHP7 largely met or surpassed its performance. That’s not a bad thing though, it just wasn’t hugely necessary anymore. The major upside is everyone gets the boost now, whereas HHVM was a nightmare to setup if you were not Facebook.

I had no idea this was why!

Thanks for sharing this insight, great to hear the rationale of teams that are choosing PHP for good reasons these days, the points you've made definitely make sense.