Right now, I think eBay is one of the big companies that uses D.
Edit: Sibling comment beat me to it.
So I doubt they would sponsor D.
I don't think MS has any interest in improving C++ (look at their compiler). But that's not because of competing activities.
Visual C++ is the best commercial implementation of C++ compilers, better not be caught using xlc, aCC, TI, IAR, icc and plenty of other commercial offerings.
If C++ has span, span_view, modules, co-routines, core guidelines, lifetime profile static analyser, is it in large part to work started and heavily contributed by Microsoft on ISO, and their collaboration with Google.
As for competing with C++, it is quite clear, specially when comparing the actual software development landscape with the 90's, that C++ has lost the app development war.
Nowadays across all major consumer OSes it has been relegated to the drivers and low level OS services layer like visual compositor, graphics engine, GPGPU binding libraries.
Ironically, from those mainstream OSes, Microsoft is the only one that still cares to provide two UI frameworks directly callable from C++.
Which most Windows devs end up ignoring in favour of the .NET bindings, as Kenny Kerr mentions in one of his talks/blog posts.
Back to the D issue, Azure IoT makes use of C# and Rust, and there is Verona at MSR as well, so as much I would like to see them spend some effort on D, I don't see it happening.
Ofc, Apple is not MS, so Swift developer experience and docs kind of suck (if you're not in the "iOS bubble" where it's nice and friendly), and multiplatform dev experience especially sucks even worse...
And "easier to pick up and code in" might not necessarily be an advantage for a systems language - better start slowly putting the puzzle together in your head, and start banging up code others need to see only after you've internalized the language and its advanced features and when (not) to use them! It helps everyone in the long run. This is one reason why I'd bet on Rust!
Well, for fairness, D is quite a bit older than Swift. (It's nearly as much older than Swift as it is younger than C++!) But what do you think pushes Swift out of the "C++ with hindsight" basket?
