Today in stupid news, two coworkers at a billion-dollar tech company were caught canoodling on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in Boston. I should note that the pair are not married, at least not to each other. And they weren’t exactly canoodling, it was more of a very amorous looking spoon-hug situation. But the real tip off that these two were doing something they shouldn’t be was each of their reactions. Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, took all of three seconds to duck out of view, while HR chief Kristin Cabot covered her face in her hands before turning her back to the camera and eventually walking away. Watch for yourselves, it is BAD! Making the moment even more cringe was frontman Chris Martin remarking on their scurrying out of sight, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.” The former, Chris.
Caught in the act: Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his alleged mistress can be seen rushing to shield their faces as they flashed up on a big screen draped in each other’s arms. As a “kiss cam” camera panned onto married Byron and his HR chief Kristin Cabot at Wednesday night’s gig in Boston, Massachusetts, frontman Martin said: “Oh look at these two.” But Byron – who had his arms wrapped around Cabot – swiftly let go of his grip and dived behind the barrier out of view as his shocked alleged lover hid her blushing face with her hands. Laughter erupted among the thousands packed into Gillette Stadium as Viva la Vida singer Martin quipped: “Oh what… either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”
Public displays of affection: According to Byron’s LinkedIn, he has been CEO of software development company Astronomer – understood to be worth more than $1.3 billion (£1 billion) – since July 2023. Cabot, meanwhile, has been the firm’s Chief People Officer for nine months. The HR staffer … boasts on her page that she wins “trust with employees of all levels, from CEOs to managers to assistants”. When Cabot was appointed in November, Byron released a gushing comment praising her “exceptional leadership and deep expertise in talent management”. He added: “She is a proven leader at multiple growth-stage companies and her passion for fostering diverse, collaborative workplaces makes her a perfect fit for Astronomer.” Cabot released a similarly enthusiastic comment, saying she was “energised in my conversations with Andy and the Astronomer leadership team about the opportunities that exist here”.
People are rallying behind Byron’s wife: The mortifying footage from Wednesday night’s gig has gone viral on social media – having been shared thousands of times on X and TikTok. Hundreds have accused Byron of cheating on his wife, and have shared support for her. One social media user commented: “Sorry for the wife but glad they’re being exposed and embarrassed.” Another wrote: “How utterly sad.” A third said: “They are both incredibly stupid, sorry. Why would you go to a concert of all places if you are having an affair.” Neither Byron or Cabot appear to have addressed affair allegations yet.
Yeah, I’m with the commenter who simultaneously expressed sympathy for Byron’s wife — who’s already had to make her Facebook private due to the influx of affair questions coming in — yet glee over the lying lovers being so publicly embarrassed. Ridicule is the least of what they’ve earned. And speaking of, those fawning quotes they gave about each other as colleagues really don’t hold up well in the new context of their affair. Or am I the only juvenile who read lines like, “deep expertise in talent management” and “energised in my conversations with Andy” with exaggerated emphasis on certain key words?
As far as I’m concerned, these two have committed at least three crimes. There’s the crime of infidelity, the crime of stupidity, and then I’m gonna add the crime of making ME feel stupid, cause I’ve been reading their company Astronomer’s homepage over and over again for 10 minutes straight and cannot figure out what the f–k it is they do! And I’m a woman of moderate intelligence! (Stop laughing.) “We are the company behind Astro, the industry-leading data orchestration and observability platform powered by Apache Airflow. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and power data-driven applications.” Ok, but what do they do? I understand all of these words individually, but together… Just sayin’, I can unlock plenty of insights, too, and I would never wreck a marriage and flaunt it at a concert. So why can’t I be a billionaire?!
Coldplay's Chris Martin accidentally exposes astronomer CEO Andy Byron having an affair with his HR chief Kristin Cabot. pic.twitter.com/GMa2g0EiK3
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) July 17, 2025
The best comment I saw was – if they just stood still, nobody would care, only concert visitors would see, which is infinitely less people than now 🙂 it’s the ducking that outted them.
Busted!
My daughter was at that concert. She said that whole situation seemed so awkward.
Now that Andy Byron is blaming Coldplay for ruining their private moment. How can one have a private moment in Gillette Stadium?
Supposedly the statement from Byron is fake
My favorite was I’d be devastated to find out my husband is a Coldplay fan.
If you’re having an affair, why are you hugged up in public? They should have just laughed and played it off or how about not feeling each other up in public.
It’s the COVER-UP that always makes it worse than the crime.
My husband and I were talking about this yesterday. There is always a chance that someone might have recognised them, but for sure, it would not have exploded into what we are seeing now.
yes!!! had they just not reacted, likely no one would have recognized them and that would be the end of it.
Well, their “professional” reaction was unprofessional too.
They fired the company’s event manager for… something. He made the mistake of quote-tweeting a news site (?) and commenting.
But he later shared he had already found a new job thanks to him explaining the whole situation in a thread.
Cheaters always have a guilty conscience, it’s very difficult to not react if you’re caught by surprise 😮 you’re first instinct is to hide 😎
@nanea I just saw that! apparently he was the one who set up the event (which makes sense)……firing him for anything related to this is such a bad look.
The best comment I saw that he was caught giving her the heimlich at the concert. 🤣 Seriously, you can imagine what kind of lover he is if that death grip is supposed to be affectionate. Ick.
I love Kismet’s write-up here. Very funny, esp the bit about WTF the company actually does.
It’s a public place so they can’t claim their privacy was invaded; pretty sure that’s how it goes in terms of legal liability.
Came here to say that too. If they hadn’t reacted odds are camera would’ve panned to someone else and likely they wouldn’t have been recognized. Idiots.
What’s the protocol here, once you’ve been outed with your sidepiece on the jumbotron by Chris Martin, subsequently seen by countless millions on the internet- – is he showing up at work right now? Is she? Is she making new harassment videos for the company to instruct people how to act at work? lmao
It looks like they have only one woman in management position and that woman is having sex with CEO. It is really sad. I saw some comments that this opens the company to a lot of lawsuits from people who didn’t get promoted or hired in recent years. I am sure the guy is gonna keep his position and she is gonna do conscious uncoupling from the company.
She’s got a lawsuit too! She works for him and can claim coercion and harassment. Never fails to amaze—is it so impossible to keep your pants on at work?
I hope she doesn’t file a bogus ‘coercion and harassment’ claim just because she got caught. That’s not how it works.
@Plum, I mean if she got the position because she was having sex with CEO and she understood at the beginning that is the way to be manager at that company, why would it be a bogus claim? If the only way up is through CEO’s bed, the company deserves to lose money for hiring sleazy men like him. That is why companies put HR procedures to handle workplace relationships.
This will be interesting.
“ I am sure the guy is gonna keep his position and she is gonna do conscious uncoupling from the company.” Exactly what I thought!
@Sevenblue, I just DIED at “conscious uncoupling from the company” ☠️
Perfect comment!
The top guy at my organization and the head of HR just had a baby (they are not married to each other, of course). And as soon as rumors about the pregnancy began to circulate, we all had to do a training on appropriate workplace relationships. 🙄
Oh, good gad! Really??
I am just imagining the kind of concern-trolling emails on her desk right now. “I’m concerned that the CEO of our company has an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, even giving her gifts like concert tickets. Please investigate thoroughly, leave no stone unturned.”
@Truthiness – We need a new Miss Manners for the current era, honestly. Dear Miss Manners: I was caught snuggling my sidepiece on a jumbotron and a massively popular singer accurately called out our behavior, which predictably went viral online. Do I go in or use a sick day?
He’s negotiating his redundancy package. Neither would be able to stay on. Such a conflict of interest re the CEO and for the woman, just a bad look for the company (even if she didn’t have to make hiring/promotion decisions (I believe) re the guy (not her husband) that she’s banging. If she’s HR, however, maybe she does have a say in CEO hires and so she’d have a conflict-of-interest issue re her role and this extramarital affair as well.
Technically, it being an extramarital affair doesn’t matter but we apply an ethical/moral dimension so it’s bad PR for the company. It’s the conflict-of-interest thing re their roles that matters.
Company meeting record! Only 2 employees called sick!
Snort! Honestly if I was spotted at a Coldplay show I’d need to hide out too. (J/K. I know people who love them.). Chris Martin speculating that they’re having an affair gives me a whole new respect for him.
I’m not exactly a fan, but I think it’s lovely how Chris Martin continues to support the Invictus Games.
No matter one’s taste in music, but big names like him showing up for something like that is what IG needs.
This is also why I don’t get why the UK media boycotted the games, unless it was about bad-mouthing Meghan, or H&M’s marriage. Or M’s clothing budget.
Thank you for that! I didn’t even realize he was a big supporter, but I googled it and found his opening performance. That’s great! And the performance is really moving.
I didn’t know that Chris Martin was an Invictus supporter, either! I have to admit I’ve had a soft spot for him ever since he brought Michael J. Fox onstage to play the guitar a year or so ago, and saying such kind words about him. I still tear up even thinking about it 😭
The universe really protected both of their spouses. What are the chances that the cameraman randomly selected those two cheaters out of thousands of people in the concert? Also, what is it with the cheaters and the concerts? That try guy was also at a concert with his side piece. What happened to having affairs discreetly?
“Work travel”
Their coworkers were also there. No doubt they said to their spouses that it is a work / bounding event with the team.
Definitely bounding involved! 😂
My sympathies to his wife if she was unaware that everyone at the company knew but her.
Wait, it was a work event? So they’re loving up on each other in front of co-workers? Co-workers who know he’s married (and her too, if she is)? Wowzers!
The company released a statement that no other employees were there.
People are just more brazen nowadays; they have no moral compass, and they just don’t care. We live in a “me first” society.
Me first is absolutely the mantra of the day. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t carry out my extra marital affairs in public spaces where I could easily run into people I know, if not straight up called out by a huge celebrity. It’s just common sense.
Yeah, you could tell by the reaction by the lady on the left that she knew *exactly* what had just happened, and that she was there with them. I feel awful for his poor wife.
Discretion? Tech Bros don’ need no discretion!
OK, so translation for those who don’t work in tech: “Industry-leading data orchestration and observability platform powered by Apache Airflow. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and power data-driven applications.”
It’s basically an analytics platform. Businesses have data stored in many different places: customer data in one place, invoicing data in another, sales in another, products in another, etc. An analytics platform allows you to centrally gather and query all data and extract useful insights which in turn will allow you to make data driven business decisions. When we’re talking about HUGE volumes of data, then you can also leverage AI.
That’s better than what I got from perusing their website. I got they do something with data and Uber is one of their clients.
So, Uber being an example:
Imagine how much data they must have, from drivers ratings, to how many people have downloaded the Uber App, to how many people actively use the app, to information about every single trip (length, cost, etc).
And this data will in many cases be stored in different places.
Say, someone at Uber wants to create a new feature for the app. An analytics platform will allow you to query ALL data in one place and get info to support (or not) the case for building this specific feature.
So, they will have a solution that allows Uber to query their own data.
thank you Tiki — that is a clear explanation. I am not a fan of the word salad trend from web pages to CV’s — I have read some of the most ridiculous resumes over the last two years and it is only becoming worse with AI – the applicants can’t even explain some of their own flowery statements.
It’s based on open-source software and “accelerates building … products”. That’s a word salad that (having bought enterprise software for a Fortune 50) has me looking for what they’re actually selling – integration services, possibly, because the software itself is never the money maker.
Whatever they do, I feel for the people who work there because it must be a terrible environment – the top brass is sleeping with each other, apparently everyone knows about it, and they have to go to a Coldplay concert for team-building. Tech startup or high school all over again?
One Forest Service ranger district I worked on had an overnight camping trip as a team building exercise for management. Glad I wasn’t management. 😏
I work in tech and I came to give the same explanation! Excellent job Tiki!
High five!
Excellent breakdown of what they do, Tiki! But my question is why would Uber need to outsource mining their own data for the purpose of improving their product (in this case, the Uber app)?
@Plum, this is not outsourcing. This would be buying products that allow you to do those things. Just like you buy excel to make calculations or powerpoint to make presentations, you buy this platform (Astro, I believe it’s called) for the purpose of consolidating and exploiting your existing data.
Thanks, again!!
Also helpful for e-discovery in lawsuits
@Tikichicka, thank you for this translation! I also couldn’t make heads or tails out of that word salad.
Bet his wife is humming “me and karma vibe like that” right about now.
Can we get a dating app for meeting rich tech bros who are absolutely going to cheat on you in a public and humiliating way that gives a decent lawyer grounds for challenging the prenup?
Pretty sure Raya has that market cornered. Good luck!
If I were young and single, I might check that out. No regrets for being happily married for 20 years to a man with no fortune.
As to what their company does, call me paranoid but what I am reading between the word salad lines is “spying on you via the Internet to try to sell you sh*t.” Which makes it funnier (for me, not for their poor spouses) that these two were spied on and caught in such a relatively low-tech way. People who hide behind their keyboards for a living thought they could hide in plain sight at a public concert. Oops.
Yes you are paranoid, and no, that’s not what they are describing. See my post for an explanation.
OK, fair enough. I was being glib so I could make a joke. But I’m not entirely off base, am I? They are making business decisions based on the data they gather. Businesses are in it to make profit, and that often involves people paying for things. Not necessarily “stuff,” but houses, insurance, schools for their kids, health care, etc. Deciding in which city to live, what career to pursue, whether to buy a car or use public transit. It’s all connected. And I’m not even suggesting there is something sketchy about what they do. It’s a valid business. I do think they should come up with a better description for it, one that doesn’t sound like they are beating around the bush about their goals.
Not all companies need to buy their product. They can also build datalakes or better yet, linking hubs to link their data silos to create clusters of profiles or graphs. I’ve seen smaller companies do it; surely Uber could.
Their company compiles internal data for a business. There are some key words missing that make it obvious they don’t create or obtain 3rd party data for their clients (but I am sure their clients provide it.)
If you want to look at sketchy companies that do what you describe, check out Axciom.
Lol, we’re so used to the idea that there are cameras everywhere, that we forget there are cameras everywhere.
I had to go to the Astronomer website to see what’s the what and yikes. From what I can tell, they create systems for managing data – how to get it from here to there and how people can use it once it gets to them…I think…
For businesses to manage their own data.
Yes. Setting aside the advances in technology, the goal seems the same as when I was an investment manager a billion years ago. A vast amount of data floating outside, all the decisions and transactions inside – how to compile the data, to arrange, compare, contrast, to get the most information, to discover new information through new associations and how to deliver and present that to the users. New ways to detect inefficiencies in the markets would give a leg up against competitors.
That is exactly what it is @eurydice
@tikichica – my unofficial job on the trading desk was “translator” between us, the IT department, the back office and the board of directors. Everybody spoke a different language – so, they’ just send me out to do it. Lol
My ex husband also had an affair with the VP of HR at his large company and took her to an Elton John concert in Vegas, even sent me a picture of the concert. I could not get over the HR of it all!
😬
I’m so sorry.
It’s an epidemic. The CEO at the company my hub works for just married the Chief People Pleaser, after cheating on his wife with her.
“Chief People Pleaser” is an actual job title?? Good grief.
Is this thew new football coach running off with the head cheerleader? (Which actually happened at my mom’s high school).
I just find myself hoping that Andy Byron’s wife hadn’t wanted to go to the Coldplay concert and her husband told her no for whatever reason. But I just have this sad feeling—for no reason!—that she wanted to go and he said he was too busy or they would never find a sitter for a night that long or he doesn’t like Coldplay. And then he went and got tickets for himself and the side piece.
Personally, I hope she’s too cool to listen to Coldplay.
They probably put that tickets into company expense. Their team was there, it wasn’t just them two cheaters.
Exactly
There was another member of HR right there in the picture Irving. The woman who is red faced, smiling, and putting her hand to her face. She knew EXACTLY how it was going down and she had no reason to shield her face
I cannot IMAGINE just standing by watching while two cheaters brazenly cheat in front of the whole staff. And then laughing about it. Jesus, people. They have KIDS, two teenage boys who are likely frickin’ MORTIFIED by this — and scared for their mom.
It’s awful.
The company released a statement saying no other employees were there.
@Truthiness, I just said the exact same thing! That woman knew what was up. What a sad mess.
@FYI, cosign
Just for the record, not surprising and not going to stop. I’ve worked in NYC among Wall Street and Main Street and this happens all the time. These days we have better tech, social media, drones, etc. so people should expect to be caught doing things they’re not supposed to be doing. I could tell you stories. Aside from possible fallout from their marriages, unless the public backlash and justified humiliation hurts the company’s revenue streams, nothing else will happen. Byron will keep his job and huge salary and continue being a dick to his wife or he’ll be asked to resign with a golden parachute while still being a dick to his wife. Fallout could be more severe for Cabot, because she’s the only woman on that c-level team, she’s been there for less than a year, and she’s head of HR.
This is so rife in tech spaces, especially in startup culture.
Or his wife could decide she’s has enough.
@Bisynaptic, MTE. Hopefully the wife will ditch this adulterous POS. Not only did he cheat, he humiliated her in the most public way possible.
Even if the lone woman in the C-Suite keeps her job, she’ll be the object of ridicule going forward in a way that he won’t.
I love how Celebitches HATE cheating, because I do too.
I do think it’s unfair that this lady will get far more negative impact from this than the dude.
It’s just so rude and disrespectful.
I hope they feel ashamed; there’s hope for them if they do.
But honey, she was choking! I was giving her the Heimlich at the very second the camera caught us!
lol this is the only remotely plausible innocent explanation
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
But he ruined even that sorry cover story by immediately running away! If she were choking, I guess now she knows how he’ll react, huh? Leaving her for dead while he scurries away 🐀
This happened a year after I left, but it turned out my former manager (EMEA President) brought in his side piece as chief commercial officer. They were both married to other people and worked together at a competitor previously.
We all wondered what her deal was exactly, as she wasn’t sales or business development really. It just looked like her job was Salesforce data cleanup and being our Token Leadership Woman at conferences. She was such a pick-me though…. laughing about how she loooooved Formula 1 and she could never decline a piece of food without laughing about how slim she was. She was so full of it. He was an arse too though.
Anyway, my former direct report texted me out of the blue and told me they had both been fired, and I screamed my head off. I had no idea but it made sense when I thought about it later and all the times when they’d both come to Dublin for ‘events’. Urrrrgh!!!!
I didn’t know that this act of stupidity was exactly what I needed to end out this week!!! I haven’t stopped laughing about it since I first saw the video yesterday.
Yes! I appreciated this piece of hilarious stupidity … it was cringy, but national security was not involved, and no vulnerable children were harmed.
It was the kind of thing we used to laugh about in the before times.
No vulnerable children were harmed, really? He has two teenage boys. You don’t think this is horrible for them? I don’t know how many kids she has.
I totally get that it’s funny for the internet, but — I really dislike cheaters, particularly because of what they do to their kids. It DOES matter to kids.
@FYI Oh I’m sure kids are harmed by infidelity. I just meant that the story itself didn’t directly involve children (as opposed to, say, the Epstein nightmare).
Turns out they’re both married. Can you imagine how hurt and humiliated their spouses are?
@QuiteContrary
Gotcha. 👍🏽
Same here. I spent a lot of time yesterday reading Reddit threads about it. Had some good laughs. (This is what happens when you’ve been laid off and have nothing much else to do.)
@Harla, same!
And @Schmootc, off to Reddit I go
That moment when they realize the jig is up and he ducks 🤣
I know right 🤣🤣🤣 funny but not funny 😏
I’ve never really had feelings either way about Chris Martin. Seems like a nice enough bloke. A bit on the boring side. Now I can’t stop laughing at how funny he was. “Ohhhh, look at these two. Oh, what?” lol Chris you sneaky bitch I love you.
Exactly! And that Byron is upset about his privacy. 🙄
Right? :))
Very much not a Coldplay fan, but who knew Chris Martin could be so sassy?! 🙂
He is messy 😂😂 He called them out about looking guilty.
Of course they work in AI. AI people are completely devoid of any moral compass.
Of all the ridiculous statements I read in my whole life, this one makes the top 5. Congrats!
I just wanna know what on earth a “Chief People Officer” does
While I was working at a big corporate company, our CPO was the one who oversaw the big picture staffing matters. The employees didn’t directly interact with her, she was the one directly reporting to the CEO. Other HR people were the ones doing the daily work. I don’t see why they would need that position in a small company though. It is probably a strategy to be seen corporate from the outside. I doubt they are employing thousands of people.
Staffing strategies, salaries, benefits, bonuses, training programs, hiring/firing, termination packages, DEI practices (of course that’s out the window now).
Imagine the culture they have created at that company though. The CEO and the head of Human Resources conducting an open affair. The ethical transgressions are many here. What a couple of scumbags.
ALSO the way he just ducks and leaves her off to the side… what an absolute coward lol.
I feel so sorry for his poor wife, but it’s fantastic how he humiliated himself so thoroughly with his pathetic reaction 😂
Oh and the dude quotes Coldplay in the non apology Coldplay DARVO! Soo cringe! Quoting Shaggy would have made more sense! “It wasn’t you!”
In my HR days I saw this a LOT. Even in companies that had a strict policy against *fraternizing* between management and those they managed. At one HUGE telephony company, the SVP of Sales & Marketing was having it off with one of the HR directors. He was married, she was single. And they were so blatant about it! They both got the heave-ho. In another company I worked for it was the VP of HR and the CEO, both married. Clearly the rules established weren’t meant for the execs, just the worker bees. You’d think those two would understand that the night has a thousand eyes and NOT to be all huggy publicly at such a huge event.
😂😂 High Kudos for the Cornell Woolrich/excellent movie reference…😈 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Woolrich
I think they were inside some sort of private box and they probably thought people couldn’t see them in their rich seats. Haha no
Chris said it was the VIP section. I am dying to know if they were company bought seats. And he claimed he was taking a client and it was his girlfriend. Who happened to to be the HR leader of the company.
US: OMG – two adult professionals caught doing something weird, we busted them! * clutches pearls *
Also the US: * elects serial philanderer, adjudicated r@p*st, confirmed affair with corn star who was paid off with campaign funds and good friends with Epstein *
What annoys me the most, is that the company will likely try to use this as a “teachable moment.” And the worker bees will be required to endure a new company training module on fraternization in the workplace or the like.
I am also in tech and six years ago, a senior c-suite executive/founder at a former company unintentionally shared a fully nude photo of himself when sharing his screen during a client meeting. This was in the early days of video meetings. Instead of acknowledging it, or removing him, the company sent out a strongly worded and scolding email to all employees admonishing the use of company property for personal use. Mind you, NO ONE ELSE in company history had ever done anything like that.
I’m guessing Randy Andy 2.0 will have a similar get out of jail free card moment.
With the country so divided , this was one thing that people were actually united.
Things really work in mysterious ways.
@AC, 🎯
Turns out she’s married also. They are both cheaters.
I feel they already hired a PR crisis team. I am seeing a lot of bot comments that she’s divorced. Like somehow that makes it better lol.
She and her husband just moved into a new house 5 months ago so I think the bots are botting up the wrong tree.
I don’t even care about the affair. What bothers me so much is that it’s another example of people in leadership NOT leading by example. Do as I say, not as I do leaders.
The compromise this creates as she is head of HR. What if one of his work buddies was sexually harassing a woman. You know she would fall right in line and take the side of the man. To help her ‘boyfriend’ out.
This is why a lot of women are scared to come forward in the workplace. Who are sexually harassed. You never know what ‘pick me girl’ you are speaking to or not in a leadership position.
They both deserve to be fired. This violates every morality clause on the planet.
But most likely the company is just hoping a bigger story blows this off the front page. They will make some phony statement they both received counseling and training. They won’t be fired and will move forward in their careers. That no one will have the balls to stand up to it. While they continue to bang each other on the side. See it every day in corporate America from the sidelines.
Well well well…the thought plickens folks. Andy Byron has just resigned and Astronomer’s board of directors accepted his resignation. I think Ms. Cabot should do the same. Good luck with your job searches.
Gotta love it when hungry ghosts get what’s coming to them. 😂😂😂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost
Ah, Tech Bros. Making Roman emperors and dictators look mild-mannered and retiring in the entitlement front. 🤣😂
White dudes accidentally publicly outing each other for being scumbags is my new summer flavor!