They did exactly that. Just not esbuild.

They sponser https://github.com/kdy1 (see the vercel in his profile), who spearheads swc, which is very similar in goals and scope to esbuild. swc may ring a bell, as it's the parser/compiler that is used by deno and bun.

Deno uses swc, but Bun does not, it uses its own parser/transpiler written in zig.

Source: check the language breakdown on zig's repo: 0% rust (what swc is written in).

LOL. One best a replies I’ve read in HN in a long time.