From DHH's long-winded keynote at Rails World 2026. He was bragging that Hey's backend is so efficient because it's written in Rust (which he hates and refuses to read).
Basically started as a glorified bunch of dotfiles. Haven't checked whether or not it's actually a distro yet.
But yeah, bunch of rich people threw a couple million at him, presumably because he's a racist and their interests align.
I really can't imagine that being about his project, especially when there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of other critically-important and chronically under-funded open-source projects.
IMO it's 100% who and 0% what.