I've been wondering: doesn't CDK depends on CloudFormation, as it basically converts code to CF files? (similar to Troposphere but with more languages supported

I've been wondering: doesn't CDK depends on CloudFormation, as it basically converts code to CF files? (similar to Troposphere but with more languages supported). If that's the case,I don't see how CDK stands a chance against Terraform or Pulumi. And I'm not talking about multi cloud support, but just about the fact that an AWS-managed product, CloudFormation, keeps lagging behind for YEARS for such a core feature of a core AWS service.