July 21 (UPI) — The new chief executive officer at Astronomer is speaking out following last week’s Coldplay concert kiss cam controversy, as he acknowledged the now viral video has raised brand awareness for the tech firm.
Pete DeJoy, co-founder and interim CEO, issued a statement Monday — called “Moving Forward at Astronomer” — after former CEO Andy Byron and Astronomer’s head of Human Resources, Kristin Cabot, were caught in an embrace Wednesday night on Coldplay’s jumbotron at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. Both Byron and Cabot, who are married to other people, ducked out of the camera shot when they saw themselves on the screen.
“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,” De Joy said.
“The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team, and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this,” he added, “Astronomer is now a household name.”
DeJoy stepped into his new role at Astronomer, “a company that I’ve proudly poured my entire professional life into helping build,” over the weekend after Byron tendered his resignation.
On Monday, DeJoy seized the company’s current spotlight to highlight its true mission.
“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,” DeJoy said.
“We’re privileged to sit at the center of our customers’ data and 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,” DeJoy continued in an attempt to steer attention away from the controversy.
Astronomer’s “mission is bigger than any one moment,” he said.