Astronomer's New CEO References the Coldplay Video in New Statement: 'The Spotlight Has Been Unusual & Surreal'

Andy Byron resigned as the CEO of Astronomer after the viral Coldplay video and now, the company’s interim CEO Pete DeJoy has released a statement amid the intense interest in what went down.

On Thursday (July 17), Byron went massively viral when footage of himself and a woman who is reported to be another Astronomer executive were spotted looking cozy at the Massachusetts concert. When the two of them ducked out of the view of the camera, frontman Chris Martin joked that the two of them must be “having an affair or they’re just really shy.”

After being placed on leave from the tech company, Astronomer announced over the weekend that he had resigned and his replacement had been revealed.

Keep reading to find out more…

Now, Pete has released a lengthy statement about what went down.

Read the entire statement, posted to LinkedIn, below.

Over the weekend, I stepped into the role of Interim CEO at Astronomer, a company that I’ve proudly poured my entire professional life into helping build.

Over the past few years, our business has experienced incredible growth. What was once a mission to help companies with Apache Airflow has turned into so much more. We’re privileged to sit at the center of our customers’ data & AI strategy, powering data pipelines behind in-game analytics of your favorite sports team, LLM powered chatbots for customer support, training AI for self-driving cars, and every mission-critical process in between.

The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies—let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world—ever encounter. The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.

At Astronomer we have never shied away from challenges; a near-decade of building this business has tested us time and time again, and each time we’ve emerged stronger. From starting a software company in Cincinnati, Ohio, to keeping the lights on through the collapse of the bank that held all our cash, to scaling from 30 to 300 people during a global pandemic that demanded we do it all without ever being in the same room.

And yet, we’re still here.

We’re here because Astronomer is built by people who live to solve hard problems, stay late to fix what’s broken, and care deeply about doing things the right way. We’re here because our customers trust us with their most ambitious data & AI projects. And, most importantly, we’re here because the mission is bigger than any one moment.

I’m stepping into this role with a wholehearted commitment to taking care of our people and delivering for our customers. Astronomer’s foundation remains strong, built around the thriving Apache Airflow community. Our opportunity to build a DataOps platform for the age of AI remains massive. And our story is very much still being written.

To our team: thank you for your resilience & commitment to building something great. And to our community and customers: thank you for your trust. We won’t let you down.

Here’s three major headlines about the Coldplay video that you probably missed this weekend, including a mis-identification from the footage!