Yes, when targeting the JVM, Kotlin is compiled to JVM *. class files, which is a bytecode format that can later be either interpreted by a JVM, or compiled to the machine code by the JVM during the program run (JIT), or even compiled ahead-of-time (AOT) down to the machine code.

How does Kotlin compile?

Yes, when targeting the JVM, Kotlin is compiled to JVM *. class files, which is a bytecode format that can later be either interpreted by a JVM, or compiled to the machine code by the JVM during the program run (JIT), or even compiled ahead-of-time (AOT) down to the machine code.

Does Kotlin have a compiler?

The Android Kotlin compiler produces Java 8 bytecode by default (which runs in any later JVM), but lets the programmer choose to target Java 9 up to 16, for optimization, or allows for more features; has bidirectional record class interoperability support for JVM, introduced in Java 16, considered stable as of Kotlin …