It is true of C and C++. In fact, LLVM is mostly used as a C/C++/Objective-C back-end (in Clang). The main advantage of LLVM is that it is a really good representation to perform optimizations on.
LLVM IR is in SSA form (static single-assignment) THE most popular IR for compiler research of late. Pretty much a lingua franca; optimization techniques old and new have been adapted to work with SSA.
