Astronomer's CEO and HR Chief Were Caught in a Coldplay Kiss-Cam Scandal. Here's How the Unicorn Tech Company Has Responded So Far. A usually cute "kiss cam" segment of Coldplay's show took an unexpected turn.
By David James
It was the Coldplay kiss cam moment that caused cringes around the world.
The CEO of a unicorn tech company and his head of human resources appear to have been caught on camera in a not-so-work-appropriate moment that has since gone viral. Now the two executives, Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot, are facing public (and workplace) backlash.
What happened at the Coldplay concert?
On Wednesday evening at Gillette Stadium near Boston, a popular segment of Coldplay's show took an unexpected turn. The band's camera crew singles out people in the crowd and puts them up on the jumbotron, and lead singer Chris Martin improvises a song. This time around, the camera landed on a snuggling couple who quickly tried to hide their faces. Martin quipped, "Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy."
A video of the moment quickly went viral, and as the video spread, it revealed that Martin might have been on to something. The man in the video was Byron, and the woman was the company's human resources chief, Cabot. The problem? Byron is married to someone else.
What is Astronomer?
Astronomer is a private data infrastructure startup that reached "unicorn" status in 2022 with a $1 billion or more evaluation. According to the company's LinkedIn page, "Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical analytics, AI, and software to life."
How does a CEO scandal like this affect the workplace?
The incident creates potential legal troubles and a crisis of leadership for the company, David Rice, HR expert at People Managing People, told Entrepreneur via email.
"The big issue is the example that it sets. Obviously, a CEO should know better. But the fact that it's with the chief people officer is even worse," Rice wrote. "She should definitely know better, and that is going to lead to a complete mistrust in HR, no matter what happens next."
"Both are on the hook here, and no online apology is going to make this go away," says Rice, pointing out why companies need to have very clear HR policies about inter-office relationships and the consequences of not adhering to them.
Has Astronomer responded?
An Astronomer spokesperson told Newsweek and the New York Post that the supposed apology from Byron that has been circulating online is fake. So far, that has been the company's only comment, as of press time.
Variety reports that the fake apology from Byron was posted on X, with the imposter writing that they wanted to apologize to his wife, family, and colleagues, and noted, "I am a Coldplay fan. And not just of the first two albums. I also like the recent stuff."
Another fake post, attributed to Coldplay, read: "Starting with our next show, we're introducing camera-free audience sections for people and their sidepieces."
Related: IBM Replaced Hundreds of HR Workers With AI, According to Its CEO
