I think Riak is a very successful product with features (distribution, simplicity, fault tolerance and scalability) that few (if any) others can match.
The core runtime and data structures are in C++. At this point, Erlang is mostly the negotiator between the nodes.
This schism in implementation is partly why I hated CouchDB back in the day. That and the fact that it's a data Roach Motel.
"Data goes in but never comes out"