Overview

• A Coldplay kiss cam at Boston’s Gillette Stadium captured CEO Andy Byron and HR chief Kristin Cabot in an embrace that went viral, drawing around 20 million views on social media within hours.
• Internet sleuths identified the executives by name, triggering Byron’s wife to remove his surname from her social profiles amid intense online scrutiny.
• Astronomer’s board suspended both Byron and Cabot and publicly refuted multiple apology letters attributed to the CEO as fake.
• Co-founder Pete DeJoy has been named interim CEO to lead the $1.3 billion DataOps firm through a formal internal investigation.
• The incident has reignited debates over privacy rights, the use of facial-recognition tools and workplace power dynamics in corporate settings.