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Who is Mike Lynch?

A look at the British tech tycoon killed when his yacht sank off Sicily

Published:Friday | August 23, 2024 | 12:10 AM
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FILE - British tech magnate Mike Lynch walks into federal court in San Francisco, March 26.
AP
FILE - British tech magnate Mike Lynch walks into federal court in San Francisco, March 26.
Italian firefighter divers bring ashore in a plastic bag the body of one of the victims of a shipwreck, in Porticello, Sicily, southern Italy, Thursday, August 22, 2024. Divers searching the wreck of the superyacht Bayesian that sank off Sicily on Monday r
AP
Italian firefighter divers bring ashore in a plastic bag the body of one of the victims of a shipwreck, in Porticello, Sicily, southern Italy, Thursday, August 22, 2024. Divers searching the wreck of the superyacht Bayesian that sank off Sicily on Monday recovered a fifth body on Thursday and continued to search for one more as investigators sought to learn why the vessel sank so quickly.
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Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died after his yacht sank off Sicily, had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley débâcle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity.

Lynch, 59, struck gold when he sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. But the deal quickly turned into an albatross for him after he was accused of cooking the books to make the sale and fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman.

His death, confirmed on Thursday by Italian officials after they recovered his body and five others from the sea, was a dramatic turn of events that came after he was cleared of criminal charges in the US in June.

Before becoming entangled with HP, Lynch was widely hailed as a visionary who inspired descriptions casting him as the British version of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Lynch was science and technology adviser to two British prime ministers. He also founded Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm that was a founding investor of British cybersecurity company Darktrace, and Luminance, an artificial intelligence platform for the legal industry.

Lynch was “an instrumental figurehead from the Cambridge (England) technology scene”, said friend Brent Hoberman, former CEO of travel website lastminute.com. Hoberman told the BBC that Lynch was “leading the path forward for UK entrepreneurs to commercialise their inventions at a global scale”.

A decade-long legal battle had resulted in Lynch’s extradition from the UK to face criminal charges of engineering a massive fraud against HP, a company that helped shape Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist after starting in a Palo Alto, California, garage in 1939.

Lynch steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP’s own bungling – a position he maintained while testifying before a jury during a 2-1/2 month trial in San Francisco earlier this year. US Justice Department prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in an attempt to prove allegations that Lynch engaged in accounting duplicity that bilked billions of dollars from HP.

The trial ended up vindicating Lynch and he pledged to return to the UK and explore new ways to innovate.

Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced a civil case in London that HP mostly won during 2022. Damages haven’t been determined in that case, but HP is seeking $4 billion. Lynch made more than $800 million from the Autonomy sale.