I'll have to take a look at OxCaml. I'm leery of "C-like" performance claims after Java has thoroughly failed to live up to a similar claim after thirty plus years of development... What it's actually achieved is about 50% C performance, IF you're willing to give it a huge heap, at least 2x the actually required memory.

Rust is clearly well positioned for deeply embedded work, and has actual C/C++ level performance. Given AI coding assistance, Rust is looking more and more approachable...and of course faster processors and compiler improvements will solve the compilation speed issue over time.

All that said, there's nothing wrong with a fast, safe language with ML syntax!

(One dark horse in all this is Mojo, which may provide Rust level safety with a more ergonomic language, and a much faster compiler...)