It's more likely to be a container/chroot than a VM.
Debian chroots on Android are nothing new -- whether this is anything new depends entirely on the execution. Autodetecting when to spin up the container, handling the external display, safely suspending the container somehow, those are all nice new things, if they work as promised.
Yeah, I get that. I'm taking a step back and asking "but is it really a good idea?". E.g. I remember how everyone was really excited about the Intel Compute Stick - for about 5 minutes, and then they realised that it's actually not particularly useful. I'm getting a similar vibe here, while it might be occasionally super useful, I'm not seeing the mainstream appeal.
Debian chroots on Android are nothing new -- whether this is anything new depends entirely on the execution. Autodetecting when to spin up the container, handling the external display, safely suspending the container somehow, those are all nice new things, if they work as promised.