The Introduction to GraalVM starts with: GraalVM is an advanced JDK with ahead-of-time Native Image compilation. ‘Native Image compilation’ means that a Java program - and its dependencies - can be compiled into a single executable. So instead of multiple .jar files that require an installed JDK, GraalVM creates a single file that works without JDK (but this file is now platform specific). While the Native Image compilation is the most popular feature, the GraalVM project has some other tricks up its sleeve.