The talk discusses two optimizations for modern virtual machines with native image capabilities. The speaker works for Bellsoft, a company that participates in the OpenJDK community and has a JDK distribution. They discuss the benefits of native images and GraalVM, which can be run as a JIT or built as a static compilation with a special virtual machine substrate VM. The first optimization is the implementation of a parallel garbage collector to decrease garbage collection pauses, and the second is implementing thing locking in GraalVM, improving performance and reducing resource usage. The speaker also discussed the relationship between GraalVM and OpenJDK and the project to bring GraalVM technology into OpenJDK.