Paddy Cosgrave has stepped down as CEO of Web Summit, the 14-year-old conference business that he cofounded and which has gone on to host one of Europe’s biggest annual tech events, along with four other events around the globe.
Following a week of controversy surrounding comments Cosgrave made about Israel and Palestine.
The conference organizers say they will be appointing a new CEO as soon as possible and that Web Summit 2023 in Lisbon will go ahead as planned.
The move comes on the heels of a series of remarks from Cosgrave in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which set off a chain of angry responses from Israelis and increasingly a wider swath of people throughout the technology community.