We introduce a virtual machine approach to program FPGAs using a high-level programming language (with automatic memory management) while hardware-accelerating a subset of it. This offers an interesting trade-off between high-level synthesis tools and pure software approaches. We describe a preliminary implementation of this hybrid approach using the OCaml language on Intel FPGAs. The associated toolset fully automatizes the compilation process from the OCaml source program to the SoPC hardware and software configuration. First results are encouraging, both for programmability and efficiency.