Mike Lynch, 59, is the founder of enterprise software company Autonomy. In June, he defended himself in a trial against charges that he artificially inflated the value of Autonomy in its $11.7 billion sale to technology giant Hewlett-Packard, and was subsequently acquitted.
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LONDON — British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch was found dead in the wreckage of his superyacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this week. He is 59 years old.
Just two months ago, Lynch was accused in a landmark US trial of HP In 2011, he sold Autonomy to an American corporate technology giant for $11.7 billion, artificially inflating the company's value.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Lynch was missing after a yacht (later confirmed to be owned by Lynch's wife Angela Bacares) sank off the coast of the small fishing village of Porticello in the Italian province of Palermo, raising concerns about Lynch. Qi's life is worried.
Bakares was one of 15 people rescued after the yacht collapsed earlier this week.
The anchored vessel, a 56-meter (184-foot) sailing ship named Bayesian, was hit by a violent storm early Monday morning.
Witnesses told local media that the anchor boat, which was carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers, sank rapidly after its mast broke.
Lynch's body was recovered from the wreckage of the yacht on Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday. His daughter Hannah remains missing, according to the source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. Sky News earlier reported news.
“Britain's Bill Gates”
Lynch was born in Ilford, a large town in east London, in 1965 to Irish parents and grew up near Chelmsford, Essex, England. His mother is a nurse and his father is a firefighter.
Lynch came from a modest background, but at the age of 11 he won a scholarship to attend Bancroft School, a private school in Woodford Green, east London.
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch speaks at the Confederation of British Industry conference in London, England, in 2003.
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After graduating from Bancroft College, he entered the University of Cambridge to study natural sciences, focusing on areas including electronics, mathematics and biology.
After completing his undergraduate studies, Lynch earned his Ph.D. in signal processing and communications.
In the late 1980s, Lynch founded Lynett Systems Ltd., a company that produced design and audio products for the music industry.
A few years later, in the early 1990s, he founded a fingerprint identification company called Cambridge Neurodynamics, which also counted South Yorkshire Police as a client.
But his big break came in 1996, when he co-founded Autonomy, a spin-off of Cambridge Neurodynamics, with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt. The company has grown to become one of the largest technology companies in the UK.
Autonomy's software, which consists of pattern-matching algorithms, is billed as a solution that helps workers extract meaning from unstructured data, including web pages, emails, video, audio and text.
These pattern recognition techniques are based on so-called Bayesian inference, a method of statistical reasoning named after the theorem proposed by the 18th-century statistician Thomas Bayes.
Lynch’s luxury yacht Bayes is named after this mathematical model.
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch poses at the company's then-office on Thursday, July 19, 2007, near Cambridge, England.
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After selling the company to Hewlett-Packard, Lynch was dubbed “Britain's Bill Gates” by British national media, becoming a rare example of a British businessman successfully building and scaling a globally important technology business and selling to various markets around the world.
Legal battle with HP
However, Lynch's reputation continued to take a hit after the HP deal soured. In 2012, HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on Autonomy's value just a year after acquiring it.
Lynch has long denied the accusations and was extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States in 2023 to stand trial on the HP charges.
The decision came despite pressure from Lynch's supporters not to allow his extradition.
U.S. prosecutors have filed criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy in an alleged scheme that began in 2009 to inflate Autonomy's revenue, in part to attract buyers.
However, Lynch scored a stunning victory in June, being acquitted of fraud charges after a trial. The trial lasted three months.
Mike Lynch is leaving London's Rolls Building following civil proceedings over the £8.4 billion sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
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During the trial, Lynch took the stand to defend himself. He denied wrongdoing and told jurors that HP botched the Autonomy integration.
Prosecutors allege Lynch and Autonomy's now-deceased financial chief Stephen Chamberlain, who also died in a tragic car crash on Saturday, enriched Autonomy's finances in a variety of ways.
These include traceability agreements, operations to cover up company losses by reselling hardware, and intimidation or bribery of individuals who raise concerns.
However, Lynch told jurors that he focused on technology-related matters at Autonomy, not finance.
He said accounting and financial decisions were made by Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's then chief financial officer.
Hussein was convicted separately in the United States in 2018 of conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud related to the HP deal. He was released from prison in January after serving a five-year sentence.
Lynch's influence on British technology
In addition to founding Autonomy, Lynch also runs Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm focused on supporting new European technology startups. He founded Invoke in 2012.
He became a key figure in supporting the UK technology industry and backed key players such as cybersecurity companies hidden traces and legal tech company Luminance.
Publicly listed Darktrace, which has fended off similar accusations by U.S. short-seller Quintessential Capital Management of overstating its earnings, agreed earlier this year to be acquired and taken private by U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion in cash.
Lynch previously served as a board member of the BBC and as an adviser to the UK government's science and technology committee.
In 2014 and 2015, he achieved Forbes Billionaires Listwith an estimated net worth of $1 billion. However, he was removed from the list in 2016, despite facing legal bills stemming from his dispute with HP.
In addition to his legal battles, Lynch has several hobbies that keep him busy, including raising and caring for cattle and pigs at his home in Suffolk.
On August 24, 2000, Mike Lynch, the founder of the software company Autonomy, was at the company's headquarters in Cambridge, England.
Bryn Colton | Helton Archives | Getty Images
“I raise rare breeds,” Lynch told LeadersIn in a 2016 interview interview. “The cows I raise didn’t exist in the 1940s, the pigs haven’t been raised since the Middle Ages, and they don’t have any Apple products.”
Lynch reportedly returned to his farm in Suffolk County, eastern England, before his death to recover from legal action in the United States, local authorities According to the East Anglia Times.
Just weeks before he was reported missing, Lynch told The Times he feared dying in prison if convicted on the HP charges.
“Had things gone the wrong way, my life would have been over as I know it,” Lynch said in the statement. Interviewed by The Times.
“It's weird, but now you have a second life – the question is, what do you want to do with it?” he added.