Astronomer’s interim CEO and co-founder, Pete DeJoy, has made his first public statement following his unexpected appointment this Saturday, expressing a desire to steer the tech startup beyond the recent viral incident involving former CEO Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot. The moment, which captured national attention, took place during a Coldplay concert in Boston, where Andy Byron was recorded in an intimate embrace with the company’s head of human resources.
Byron resigned just days after the video surfaced, prompting the board to appoint DeJoy as interim chief and to initiate a search for a permanent CEO. Reflecting on the situation, DeJoy described the intense media focus as “unusual and surreal,” signalling his commitment to move the company forward amid the upheaval.
Astronomer CEO Pete DeJoy’s Full Statment on LinkedIn
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.