Mike Lynch: British Tech Tycoon's Tragic End at Sea Following Legal Battles

Guest list for Mike Lynch's fatal boat party filled with Autonomy players

On board the doomed Bayesian superyacht that claimed Mike Lynch's life were not only his family and friends but also crucial business figures who encapsulated the key phases of his career. High-flying former employees at his tech group Autonomy, allies who helped push through its multi-billion dollar sale to HP, and the legal brains who defended him after that deal turned sour were all in attendance on the Mediterranean when it ran into storms on Monday morning. Lynch was pronounced dead on Thursday after the yacht he boarded with 21 other passengers sank off the coast of Sicily. He was celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges linked to HP's $11.7 billion acquisition of Lynch's tech group Autonomy in 2011. Lynch was joined by his wife, Angela Bacares, who survived, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch, whose body was recovered on Friday morning. Other passengers included critical allies who had supported Lynch through the tech mogul's most turbulent period. The getaway was a symbolic voyage on what Lynch had described as the beginning of a "second life." Rumors have now swirled about the connections between the guests on the boat and the coincidental death of Steven Chamberlain in a collision with a driver in Cambridgeshire, just days before the boat sank. Chamberlain was a veteran at Autonomy and went on to become Chief Operating Officer at Darktrace, a company widely connected with Autonomy. He took a "leave of absence" to defend himself during Lynch's recent trial in the United States. The bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, 70, as well as his wife (Judy Bloomer), were recovered alongside Lynch's on Wednesday. Autonomy appointed Bloomer as a non-executive board member in 2010. He chaired the group's audit committee during the HP sale and was a key witness for Lynch's defense during his fraud trial in California. At the time of his passing, Bloomer was an international chair at Morgan Stanley International. Bloomer told prosecutors that Lynch "wasn't particularly interested in the finance side" of Autonomy, preferring to focus on strategy and the company's products. Chris Morvillo, 59, passed away aboard the Bayesian yacht with his wife, American jewelry designer Neda Morvillo, 57. Morvillo, a lawyer at magic circle firm Clifford Chance, represented Lynch in his criminal trial in the U.S. He told the legal podcast For the Defense that the case "covered one-third of my career" after his first meeting with Lynch in 2012, as HP's unrest grew. In a rare LinkedIn post following the trial, which would also prove to be one of his last, Morvillo thanked his daughters and his late wife, Neda. Ayla Ronald, a 36-year-old senior associate at Clifford Chance, was also on board the Bayesian with her partner Matthew Fletcher. Both survived the sinking. Ronald's company profile details how she also defended Lynch in his fraud trial with HP. After Lynch sold Autonomy, for which he is reported to have received £500 million ($656 million), he set up the venture capital fund Invoke Capital in 2012, which would see his influence expand deep into the U.K. tech scene in his final years. Invoke was an early-stage investor in Darktrace, now subject to a $5.3 billion acquisition from U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The VC fund also invested in British AI company Luminance, which closed a $40 million funding round in April. Lynch and his wife Angela held hundreds of millions of their net worth in their final years through Darktrace, with a source telling Fortune they collectively had a 7% stake in the £4 billion ($5.25 billion) valued company at the time of their passing. Fortune exclusively revealed the deal is expected to still complete later in 2024. Several former high-flyers from Lynch's Autonomy days lept into key positions at Darktrace. Poppy Gustafsson, Darktrace's current CEO, was a corporate controller at Autonomy. In a LinkedIn post commemorating the lives lost, Gustafsson said "Without Mike, there would be no Darktrace. We owe him so much". The links appear deep-Darktrace's founding CEO Nicole Eagan also served as Chief Marketing Officer at Autonomy, during the acquisition period involving HP. Neither Eagan or Gustafsson were on the boat and continue to hold leadership positions at Darktrace today. Charlotte Golunski is another person with long-held business ties to Lynch. She is a partner at Invoke Capital, joining during its formation in 2012. Invoke Capital shared offices with Darktrace near London's Trafalgar square for a number of years. Before joining Invoke, Golunski worked for Lynch at Autonomy and HP Autonomy for a year after the acquisition. Golunski, 35, survived the sinking of the Bayesian alongside her partner James Emsley and their 1-year-old daughter. She had been asleep on the deck of the yacht with her baby when the storm hit, describing how she felt oscillations in the boat before it went down minutes later. She told the Italian outlet La Repubblica how she had held her baby above her arms in the water before she was rescued.

Mike Lynch and the tragedy of the Bayesian

In June, Mike Lynch walked out of a San Francisco courtroom, a free man under the California sun. He had been acquitted of fraud in a US federal court, where the conviction rate for those pleading not guilty is above 80 per cent. After 12 years of legal battles over the sale of the company he co-founded, Autonomy, he was "elated" -- and ready to resume his position as one of Britain's most successful tech entrepreneurs. Lynch had feared that, if he had been convicted, his life would have ended in a US prison. He could not have imagined it would instead end barely two months later on a celebratory sailing trip in the Mediterranean. Early on Monday morning, the 59-year-old drowned when his yacht the Bayesian sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily. His 18-year-old daughter Hannah, his trial lawyer Christopher Morvillo, trial witness Jonathan Bloomer and three others were also killed. In a separate tragedy, Lynch's co-defendant, Steve Chamberlain, had been killed two days earlier by a car while running near his home in Cambridgeshire. By macabre coincidence, Lynch died a day after the 13th anniversary of Autonomy announcing its sale to HP for $11bn. This series of chance events led some on social media to jump to baseless conspiracy theories. Others complained that the Italian coastguard's search for Lynch and others was attracting far more attention than Mediterranean migrant boat tragedies. Yet for friends of Lynch and Chamberlain, there was only shock. "The Greeks never wrote tragedy this cruel," says Andy Kanter, a former Autonomy executive who stayed on the Bayesian many times. "The cruelty is just unfathomable." The sinking of the Bayesian, known for its striking design, also came as a shock to the booming luxury yacht industry -- especially for its apparent speed. "What I don't understand is how something can happen that quickly, with people not having time to get out of their cabins and up on deck," says one superyacht expert. According to one doctor, some surviving passengers recalled the sinking "lasted from three to five minutes in total . . . they said the boat was initially lifted, before it sank. They told us they found themselves in the sea without even realising how they got there." There are questions about the role of extreme weather: the Mediterranean reached a record median surface temperature of 28.9C this month. One possibility is that a waterspout, a marine typhoon, struck the boat. The vessel had a 72-metre mast, one of the world's tallest, but was far smaller than the motorised superyachts resembling small cruise liners often favoured by the super wealthy. Lynch's friends emphasised that, unlike some large yacht owners, he was not ostentatious. "The Bayesian was not a status symbol," says Vanessa Colomar, a longtime adviser. "Mike enjoyed the wind in the sails, the night skies, the distant horizon, sailing alongside pods of dolphins watching the Italian villages dotted on hillsides go by . . . It was an escape, a refuge and a place to simply be." The boat, which was in the name of Lynch's wife Angela Bacares, was bought in 2014 for about $30mn. The couple did not boast about it. "In 30-something years of knowing him, I didn't know he had a boat," says David Tabizel, co-founder of Autonomy. Another friend who had been due to join Lynch on the yacht this summer was not aware it existed until they received an invitation. Lynch was better known for his love of dogs and his interest in rare-breed pigs and cows at his farm in Suffolk. Superyacht accidents are not uncommon in the Mediterranean. On August 13, the 30.5-metre sailing boat Wally Love washed ashore in a storm on the Spanish island of Formentera. There were no reported fatalities. But it remains very rare for a large, modern cruising vessel to founder simply because of the weather -- even in a severe storm. The Bayesian's skipper, New Zealander James Cutfield, who survived, was quoted in Italian media saying: "We just didn't see it coming." He hasn't commented publicly since. The bare facts are these: the Bayesian was anchored a few hundred metres from the shore near Porticello in Sicily, near another yacht, the Sir Robert Baden Powell, in a place that should have been sheltered from the predicted bad weather. At 3.50am, the position recorded by the boat's Automatic Identification System (AIS) started to change, suggesting that the Bayesian was dragging its anchor in a strong wind. The last recorded AIS position was at 4.06am, presumably when the boat sank. The Italian coastguard said winds had reached an extraordinary 60 knots, equivalent to a Force 11 "violent storm" on the Beaufort scale. Karsten Borner, skipper of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, turned on his engine to avoid colliding with the Bayesian. He rescued the 15 survivors. His boat, built in 1957, withstood the storm; the Bayesian, built in 2008, did not. Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns the Bayesian's builder, Perini Navi, tells the Financial Times that the crew should have had time to evacuate passengers. He suggests that the large opening just above the waterline on the stern, which pivots down to make a bathing platform and launching point for small boats, may have been open and become flooded, and the same might have been true for another waterline opening on the side. However, it is not known if these hatches were indeed open. On Friday it emerged that Italian prosecutors are investigating potential charges of "negligent shipwreck" against persons unknown. Survivors of the Bayesian spent the week at a hotel, screened from the world's media by guards, in the fishing village of Santa Flavia, near Palermo. The locals seemed hardened by a history of deaths at sea. As bodies were retrieved from the wreck, 50 metres deep, on Wednesday and Thursday, fishing boats went about their business. Lynch came from humble beginnings, the son of a fireman and a nurse, both Irish immigrants. With a PhD from Cambridge, he pioneered the processing of unstructured data, long before artificial intelligence was fashionable, and turned it into a FTSE 100 company, Autonomy. It was "in many ways a precursor" to today's large language models, says Suranga Chandratillake, a former Autonomy executive. Lynch's talent was combining mathematical and engineering precision with commercial focus. "He took a look at my business plan and said, 'That's a load of old shit. I can do better than that,'" recalls Autonomy co-founder Tabizel. "We were a billion-dollar company within a year." His robust approach -- a judge would later describe his style as "controlling and interventionist" -- would bring him into conflict with some City analysts, and Autonomy was dogged by questions about its accounting. But his friends remember him as straightforward, with a sense of fun and a delight for telling stories to children. He became good friends with the guards who kept him under house arrest in San Francisco, during his US trial. The legal fight began in 2012, barely a year after HP bought Autonomy, when the IT giant accused Lynch and other leaders of fraudulently inflating the company's revenues to overvalue it by $5bn. Lynch faced court action on both sides of the Atlantic. Lynch was shunned by many in tech and politics, but largely remained calm. "I remember saying, 'I don't know how you keep going.' He replied, 'I have no choice,'" says Richard Holway, a tech analyst. After being extradited to the US, he brushed aside some advisers' calls for him to settle, and involved himself in the detail of his legal strategy, including testifying to the jury himself. During his trial, he set Fridays aside for talking to technology companies, including Luminance, an AI legal business that he backed. Despite legal fees, Lynch's finances were robust. "My wife has been very good at investing in the things that I've told her to from a point of view of technology. We've done very well," he told The Sunday Times. One adviser says Lynch had "got wealthier, not poor, through this entire situation". After his acquittal in the US, he said he planned to campaign for reforms to the US-UK extradition treaty, which opponents say is asymmetric. "There was zero sense of bitterness," says Kanter. But Lynch was also tired: he went to the Bayesian to relax. Italian and British investigators are looking into the sinking. British police are also conducting inquiries into Chamberlain's death; they haven't arrested the driver of the Vauxhall Corsa that was involved. Lynch died before he could appeal against a 2022 English civil judgment that held, on the balance of probabilities, he had acted fraudulently. That civil litigation will now likely pass to Bacares, who survived the sinking. Having ruled in favour of HP, the judge must decide what damages to award against Lynch and Autonomy's former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain (who was convicted in the US). HP has asked for $4bn; Lynch had argued for zero. Judgment was expected as early as October, but may be delayed out of sensitivity. Ultimately, Lynch's estate is likely to be asked to cover HP's legal costs to the tune of double-digit millions. HP would also look to pursue his assets, including those to be passed on to his heirs. But the Bayesian and most of the family's shares in Darktrace, a cyber security company he co-founded, have long been in Bacares' name. Lynch had promised to appeal against the civil judgment. Even death will not end his legal saga; his grieving heirs must choose whether to seek posthumous vindication.

Mike Lynch, British tech trailblazer who died at sea after US trial acquittal

LONDON (Reuters) - Mike Lynch, the tech tycoon who died when his luxury yacht sank off Sicily, spent more than a decade building Britain's biggest software company and almost as long again fighting charges he had inflated its value to secure a multi-billion-pound sale. Lynch's body was retrieved on Thursday from the wreck of Monday's disaster, interior ministry official Massimo Mariani told Reuters. Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University, and was lauded by shareholders, business leaders and politicians when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion 15 years later. But in late 2012, HP stunned Wall Street and the City of London by saying it had discovered a massive accounting scandal. Lynch denied the charges. HP wrote off $8.8 billion of value and triggered 12 years of legal battles in courtrooms from London to San Francisco. Lynch was known for his formidable intelligence, turning his cutting-edge academic research into a multi-billion pound tech business and becoming known as Britain's Bill Gates. He did not shy away from clashing with critics of his company - including on one occasion Oracle's Larry Ellison - and took a central role in building his defence. He hired the biggest names in Britain's legal and corporate communications professions, and invited some journalists into a room filled with neatly stacked piles of company documents to be briefed on its accounts. HP had been drawn to Autonomy's ability to search and organise unstructured information for clients, a killer application in a world of unlimited data, before the emergence of advanced artificial intelligence. Lynch received about $800 million for his stake in Autonomy. A NOD TO BAYES THEOREM Autonomy's software used patented algorithms based on a mathematical formula developed in the 18th Century by Reverend Thomas Bayes. In a nod to the formula, Lynch had named his yacht that sank off Italy the Bayesian. HP pursued Lynch in a civil case in London's High Court for $5 billion, with the entrepreneur spending 22 days in the witness box, one of the longest cross examinations in the UK. The U.S. firm won much of the case in 2022 after the judge found that Lynch and a colleague had fraudulently concealed a "fire sale" of hardware and engaged in convoluted reselling schemes to mask a shortfall in sales of Autonomy's software, the business HP coveted. Damages are still to be decided in the civil case. Lynch then faced extradition to the U.S. on criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy, where he could have faced decades in jail if found guilty. He took the stand in San Francisco in his own defence, denying wrongdoing and telling jurors that HP had botched the integration of its acquisition. "Autonomy was an extremely successful company," he said. Lynch was acquitted on all charges in June and freed after a year under house arrest. He said he was "elated" and looking forward to returning to his family and his estate in Suffolk, England, where he had a herd of rare-breed cattle and many dogs. As part of the celebration, Lynch invited those who had supported him to join his family on his 56-metre (184-foot) yacht for a sailing holiday around southern Italy. Guests included his lawyer and a Morgan Stanley executive who had appeared as a character witness. The boat was at anchor, its sails down, when it was hit by a violent storm before dawn on Monday and sank quickly. His wife survived but on Thursday their younger daughter was still missing, the last person unaccounted for after four other bodies were recovered. The ship's chef was also found dead hours after the disaster. UK TECH CHAMPION Lynch was born in 1965 and raised in Chelmsford near London. He said his parents, a nurse and a fireman, instilled in him an appreciation of the value of education. At Cambridge University, he studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry, and went on to research signal processing for his doctorate. His thesis is still one of the most widely consulted in the university's library, local media reports have said. He founded Autonomy in 1996 and used some of the sale proceeds to become a champion of UK tech. His venture capital firm Invoke backed Darktrace, a British cybersecurity company in the process of being sold to U.S. firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion, and other tech businesses. The married father of two daughters was keen to share his expertise. He advised the government on science and innovation, was on the boards of the BBC and British Library, and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. After his acquittal, he vowed to campaign against the extradition treaty between Britain and the United States, which British critics have long called too one-sided, and he told the BBC in August that he could not have been acquitted without the money to fund his defence. "You shouldn't need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen", he said. (Editing by Kate Holton, Bernadette Baum and Sharon Singleton)

Darktrace -- the cybersecurity firm backed by doomed tech tycoon Mike Lynch -- attracts renewed scrutiny after yacht disaster

Divers recovered the body of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch on Thursday, confirming the worst fears after his superyacht sunk off the Italian coast on Monday. The tragic accident resurfaced Lynch's controversial career, which saw the tycoon cleared of fraud charges in a U.S. federal court in June related to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. Darktrace, a U.K. cybersecurity company that counted Lynch as one of its founding investors, has also faced renewed attention as it seeks to finalize an acquisition by the U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo for more than $5 billion. While Darktrace's stock has soared in recent months, the company was the subject of a short seller campaign in early 2023 that accused the company of committing similar fraud and accounting wrongdoing that plagued Autonomy. No wrongdoing was ever proven, and at the time, Darktrace's CEO issued a statement defending the company from "unfounded inferences." Now Lynch's sudden death is putting his troubled business practices back into the spotlight -- and just when the company is hoping to pull off an unlikely recovery. While Lynch is one of the most celebrated figures in the U.K. tech scene, his career was peppered by myriad allegations, which he managed to shake again and again. Dubbed the British 'Bill Gates,' Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996, selling the company to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion. The deal quickly became surrounded by scandal, however, after the new owner wrote down its investment by $8.8 billion just a year later, alleging widespread accounting errors. Autonomy's former CFO Sushovan Hussain was found guilty of fraud in 2018 by a U.S. jury, although Lynch was acquitted earlier this summer of all 17 charges pitted against him. Despite the baggage around Autonomy, Lynch found continued success in tech through his venture firm, Invoke Capital, which he founded in 2012. One of its most profitable investments was Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm that shared deep connections with Autonomy, including, as of early 2020, half of Darktrace's board and six of its eight top executives. Lynch and his wife held a combined stake of around 7% in Darktrace as of April 2024. In part thanks to its ties to Autonomy, Darktrace soon became mired in scandals, including a Forbes investigation that alleged widespread sexual harassment. Despite the bad press, Darktrace went public in April 2021, with its price soaring from an initial valuation of $2.4 billion by 43% on its first day of trading. The honeymoon didn't last. In September 2022, discussions of an acquisition between Thoma Bravo and Darktrace fell through, sending share prices tumbling. And then in early 2023, the short-selling firm Quintessential Capital Management published a 70-page report accusing Darktrace of similar misconduct that had sunk Autonomy, including fudging sales numbers, misrepresenting revenue, and maintaining unsustainable marketing expenses. In particular, the report referenced practices called "channel stuffing" and "round-tripping," which inflate revenue figures by exaggerating sales through resellers, as well as misrepresenting one-off hardware sales as recurring software sales. "We are deeply skeptical about the validity of Darktrace's financial statements," the report read. Darktrace's shares plunged as much as 17% after the report was published, though the company said at the time that the management team and board had "rigorous controls in place." Quintessential Capital Management characterized Darktrace's reaction as a "lame non-response" in a follow-up report, arguing that Darktrace had not denied any of its allegations. Despite short positions by other firms -- which would later include the U.K.-based firms Shadowfall and Qube Research & Technologies, along with the U.S.-based Cadian Capital Management -- Darktrace managed to regain its share price. To shore up its reputation, the firm also hired Ernst & Young, whose accountants would find areas that "could be improved," but didn't find shortcomings material to Darktrace's financial statements and controls. In response, Quintessential Capital Management called for the investigation to be published, but Darktrace declined, arguing that it contained "commercially sensitive information." A spokesperson for Darktrace pointed Fortune to the announcement the company made about the conclusion of the Ernst & Young Review, and the RNS updates at the time of the short seller attack, and added they didn't have any additional comment beyond what they said at the time. Darktrace managed to recover from the episode, buoyed by the AI boom. Last January, the company shared a rosy outlook for its revenue and margins thanks to the demand for AI-powered products, projecting its revenue to grow around 24%. And in April 2024, Darktrace agreed to new sales talks with Thoma Bravo at a 20% premium to where its share prices had closed the previous day. Darktrace's stock surged 16% on the news, its highest close since November 2021, likely wiping out any continued short positions. While Lynch did not hold a formal position at Darktrace after stepping off its board in 2018 amid the Autonomy fraud trial, the widespread public attention around his death is resurfacing the rollercoaster that was his career, including his involvement with Darktrace and the lingering accusations against the company. With the end of the acquisition talks in its sights, Darktrace's bumpy ride may be far from over.

Mike Lynch, British tech trailblazer who died at sea after U.S. trial acquittal

Mike Lynch, the tech tycoon who died when his luxury yacht sank off Sicily, spent more than a decade building Britain's biggest software company and almost as long again fighting charges he had inflated its value to secure a multi-billion-pound sale. Lynch's body was retrieved on Thursday from the wreck of Monday's disaster, a senior Italian official said. Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University, and was lauded by shareholders, business leaders and politicians when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion 15 years later. But in late 2012, HP stunned Wall Street and the City of London by saying it had discovered a massive accounting scandal. Lynch denied the charges. HP wrote off $8.8 billion of value and triggered 12 years of legal battles in courtrooms from London to San Francisco. Lynch was known for his formidable intelligence, turning his cutting-edge academic research into a multi-billion pound tech business and becoming known as Britain's Bill Gates. He did not shy away from clashing with critics of his company - including on one occasion Oracle's Larry Ellison - and took a central role in building his defence. (Unravel the complexities of our digital world on The Interface podcast, where business leaders and scientists share insights that shape tomorrow's innovation. The Interface is also available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.) Body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch is among those recovered from yacht wreckage, officials say He hired the biggest names in Britain's legal and corporate communications professions, and invited some journalists into a room filled with neatly stacked piles of company documents to be briefed on its accounts. HP had been drawn to Autonomy's ability to search and organise unstructured information for clients, a killer application in a world of unlimited data, before the emergence of advanced artificial intelligence. Lynch received about $800 million for his stake in Autonomy. A NOD TO BAYES THEOREM Autonomy's software used patented algorithms based on a mathematical formula developed in the 18th Century by Reverend Thomas Bayes. In a nod to the formula, Lynch had named his yacht that sank off Italy the Bayesian. HP pursued Lynch in a civil case in London's High Court for $5 billion, with the entrepreneur spending 22 days in the witness box, one of the longest cross-examinations in the UK. The U.S. firm won much of the case in 2022 after the judge found that Lynch and a colleague had fraudulently concealed a "fire sale" of hardware and engaged in convoluted reselling schemes to mask a shortfall in sales of Autonomy's software, the business HP coveted. Damages are still to be decided in the civil case. Lynch then faced extradition to the U.S. on criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy, where he could have faced decades in jail if found guilty. He took the stand in San Francisco in his own defence, denying wrongdoing and telling jurors that HP had botched the integration of its acquisition. "Autonomy was an extremely successful company," he said. Lynch was acquitted on all charges in June and freed after a year under house arrest. He said he was "elated" and looking forward to returning to his family and his estate in Suffolk, England, where he had a herd of rare-breed cattle and many dogs. As part of the celebration, Lynch invited those who had supported him to join his family on his 56-metre (184-foot) yacht for a sailing holiday around southern Italy. Guests included his lawyer and a Morgan Stanley executive who had appeared as a character witness. The boat was at anchor, its sails down, when it was hit by a violent storm before dawn on Monday and sank quickly. His wife survived but on Thursday their younger daughter was still missing, the last person unaccounted for after four other bodies were recovered. The ship's chef was also found dead hours after the disaster. UK TECH CHAMPION Lynch was born in 1965 and raised in Chelmsford near London. He said his parents, a nurse and a fireman, instilled in him an appreciation of the value of education. At Cambridge University, he studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry, and went on to research signal processing for his doctorate. His thesis is still one of the most widely consulted in the university's library, local media reports have said. Five bodies found, one still missing in U.K. tycoon shipwreck off Sicily He founded Autonomy in 1996 and used some of the sale proceeds to become a champion of UK tech. His venture capital firm Invoke backed Darktrace, a British cybersecurity company in the process of being sold to U.S. firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion, and other tech businesses. "Mike's ability to identify and solve complex problems was phenomenal, as was his ability to simplify and explain them," said family friend Patrick Jacob, in a statement distributed by a Lynch family spokesperson. "As a friend, Mike was never dull and always ready for a lively debate on almost any topic conducted with intelligence and convivial vigour. He could be challenging and direct but I never came away from seeing him without feeling my life was enriched by the experience." Lynch, a married father of two daughters, was keen to share his expertise. He advised the government on science and innovation, was on the boards of the BBC and British Library, and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. After his acquittal, he vowed to campaign against the extradition treaty between Britain and the United States, which British critics have long called too one-sided, and he told the BBC in August that he could not have been acquitted without the money to fund his defence. "You shouldn't need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen", he said. Read Comments

Mike Lynch, acquitted in US trial and found dead at sea, was British tech trailblazer

Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 from his ground-breaking research at Cambridge University, and was lauded by shareholders, business leaders and politicians when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion 15 years later. But in late 2012, HP stunned Wall Street and the City of London by saying it had discovered a massive accounting scandal. Lynch denied the charges. HP wrote off $8.8 billion of value and triggered 12 years of legal battles in courtrooms from London to San Francisco. Lynch was known for his formidable intelligence, turning his cutting-edge academic research into a multi-billion pound tech business and becoming known as Britain's Bill Gates. He did not shy away from clashing with critics of his company - including on one occasion Oracle's Larry Ellison - and took a central role in building his defence. He hired the biggest names in Britain's legal and corporate communications professions, and invited some journalists into a room filled with neatly stacked piles of company documents to be briefed on its accounts. HP had been drawn to Autonomy's ability to search and organise unstructured information for clients, a killer application in a world of unlimited data, before the emergence of advanced artificial intelligence. Lynch received about $800 million for his stake in Autonomy. A NOD TO BAYES THEOREM Autonomy's software used patented algorithms based on a mathematical formula developed in the 18th Century by Reverend Thomas Bayes. In a nod to the formula, Lynch had named his yacht that sank off Italy the Bayesian. HP pursued Lynch in a civil case in London's High Court for $5 billion, with the entrepreneur spending 22 days in the witness box, one of the longest cross-examinations in the UK. The U.S. firm won much of the case in 2022 after the judge found that Lynch and a colleague had fraudulently concealed a "fire sale" of hardware and engaged in convoluted reselling schemes to mask a shortfall in sales of Autonomy's software, the business HP coveted. Damages are still to be decided in the civil case. Lynch then faced extradition to the U.S. on criminal charges including wire fraud and conspiracy, where he could have faced decades in jail if found guilty. He took the stand in San Francisco in his own defence, denying wrongdoing and telling jurors that HP had botched the integration of its acquisition. "Autonomy was an extremely successful company," he said. Lynch was acquitted on all charges in June and freed after a year under house arrest. He said he was "elated" and looking forward to returning to his family and his estate in Suffolk, England, where he had a herd of rare-breed cattle and many dogs. As part of the celebration, Lynch invited those who had supported him to join his family on his 56-metre (184-foot) yacht for a sailing holiday around southern Italy. Guests included his lawyer and a Morgan Stanley executive who had appeared as a character witness. The boat was at anchor, its sails down, when it was hit by a violent storm before dawn on Monday and sank quickly. His wife survived but on Thursday their younger daughter was still missing, the last person unaccounted for after four other bodies were recovered. The ship's chef was also found dead hours after the disaster. UK TECH CHAMPION Lynch was born in 1965 and raised in Chelmsford near London. He said his parents, a nurse and a fireman, instilled in him an appreciation of the value of education. At Cambridge University, he studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry, and went on to research signal processing for his doctorate. His thesis is still one of the most widely consulted in the university's library, local media reports have said. He founded Autonomy in 1996 and used some of the sale proceeds to become a champion of UK tech. His venture capital firm Invoke backed Darktrace, a British cybersecurity company in the process of being sold to U.S. firm Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion, and other tech businesses. "Mike's ability to identify and solve complex problems was phenomenal, as was his ability to simplify and explain them," said family friend Patrick Jacob, in a statement distributed by a Lynch family spokesperson. "As a friend, Mike was never dull and always ready for a lively debate on almost any topic conducted with intelligence and convivial vigour. He could be challenging and direct but I never came away from seeing him without feeling my life was enriched by the experience." Lynch, a married father of two daughters, was keen to share his expertise. He advised the government on science and innovation, was on the boards of the BBC and British Library, and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. After his acquittal, he vowed to campaign against the extradition treaty between Britain and the United States, which British critics have long called too one-sided, and he told the BBC in August that he could not have been acquitted without the money to fund his defence. "You shouldn't need to have funds to protect yourself as a British citizen", he said. (Editing by Kate Holton, Bernadette Baum, Sharon Singleton and Rosalba O'Brien)

$5.3 billion sale of Darktrace to move forward despite tragic yacht death of founding investor Mike Lynch

The passing of Mike Lynch, the U.K. tech entrepreneur who perished last weekend when his luxury yacht abruptly sank in the Mediterranean, is unlikely to impact the sale of cybersecurity firm Darktrace, of which he and his wife own a significant share. Thoma Bravo, a software-focused private equity firm, had agreed to buy Darktrace in April for $5.3 billion, and Darktrace shareholders voted to approve the sale in June. The deal still needs regulatory approval, but Thoma Bravo is expected to complete the acquisition by the end of 2024, a person familiar with the transaction said. "If the shares have already been voted, there is no obvious mechanism or need for further approval or action to be taken by any shareholders, including the Lynch family or estate," an attorney who advises on M&A transactions told Fortune. The sale has been back in the spotlight in the wake of the yacht tragedy, which also took the life of Lynch's 18-year-old daughter as well as those of a prominent banker and lawyer. The deaths also came the same week that Lynch's co-defendant in a related fraud case was fatally run over by a car. The fraud case was Autonomy, a software firm that Lynch founded and sold to U.S. tech giant HP, which accused him of using accounting improprieties to inflate the company's value. Lynch's connection to Darktrace is through his venture capital firm Invoke Capital. In 2013, a team of Cambridge mathematicians, including current CEO Poppy Gustafsso, along with business people and intelligence experts, founded the startup that relies on A.I. to combat cyberthreats. The U.K.-based Darktrace raised $230.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Invoke was an early investor of Darktrace. Darktrace went public in 2021, during the height of the IPO boom. But rather than listing in the U.S., Darktrace opened for trading on the London Stock Exchange. Invoke Capital was said to be Darktrace's largest investor at the time, owning 39.5% of the company, The Guardian reported. Within months of the IPO, Darktrace's valuation soared to nearly 7 billion pounds ($9.2 billion). In 2022, Thoma Bravo made its first attempt to buy Darktrace but walked away from negotiations when the two sides couldn't agree on terms. The PE firm returned this year, clinching a deal for Darktrace in April. By this time, Lynch's stake in Darktrace had fallen. The entrepreneur and his wife, Angela Bacares, own roughly 7% of Darktrace, the person said. Lynch and his wife were aboard a yacht named Bayesian after the Bayesian Inference, a statistical model that formed the foundations of his company Autonomy. The boat sank off the coast of Sicily earlier this week and Lynch was pronounced dead Thursday, Aug. 22, while his wife survived. Lynch hasn't been affiliated with Darktrace for some time. When he passed, he was not an executive of Darktrace but a shareholder. Lynch's influence on the U.K. tech scene was enormous and he was hailed as the "British Bill Gates," although he was better known for his legal problems. A Cambridge-educated mathematician, he developed software that could extract useful information from unstructured sources including phone calls, emails and video. This software was at the core of Autonomy, which HP purchased for $11 billion in 2011. But the next year, HP was forced to write down $8.8 billion of Autonomy's value, making it one of the worst deals in history. HP, along with US prosecutors, alleged that Lynch and Autonomy's former finance chief used accounting tricks to inflate the company's revenue ahead of the 2011 sale, Fortune reported. In August, a federal court in San Francisco acquitted Lynch of criminal fraud charges. Lynch's late codefendant in the fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, served as Autonomy's former vice president of finance. Both men were acquitted in a U.S. criminal trial but civil lawsuits remain ongoing. Chamberlain also worked for Darktrace, joining in 2016 as CFO and was named COO in September 2020. He went on administrative leave in June 2023, his LinkedIn said.

Mike Lynch, prominent British tech entrepreneur, dies at 59

Sorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. Mike Lynch, a tech tycoon who built one of the biggest software companies in Britain and in June was acquitted after a U.S. fraud trial related to its sale, has been declared dead after a boating accident on Aug. 19 off the northern coast of Sicily. He was 59. The Italian coast guard said on Aug. 22 that it had recovered Dr. Lynch's body, the Associated Press reported. An Italian government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with protocol, confirmed to The Washington Post that Dr. Lynch's body had been recovered. Dr. Lynch was on a roughly 180-foot luxury sailing yacht, the Bayesian, with his wife, daughter and 19 others when the boat sank in a sudden violent storm. Fifteen people were rescued, including Dr. Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares. The Lynches' teenage daughter Hannah remains missing. The yacht's chef was confirmed dead. Four other bodies were pulled from the wreckage but have not been publicly identified. The yacht, owned by a company controlled by Bacares, was reputedly named after "Bayesian inference," the statistical method for adjusting a hypothesis based on new evidence. Dr. Lynch's artificial-intelligence algorithms -- the core of the company he co-founded -- were based on this method. Dr. Lynch's voyage was meant to be a celebration after the year he spent under house arrest in San Francisco while fighting more than a dozen U.S. Justice Department charges of conspiracy and wire fraud. The charges stemmed from the sale of his company, Autonomy, more than a decade ago, to Hewlett-Packard, for about $11.7 billion. Before the jury acquitted him of all charges, Dr. Lynch had faced up to 25 years in prison. His co-defendant in the case, Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy's former vice president of finance, was also acquitted. Chamberlain was struck by a car on Aug. 17 while he was on a run in England and died soon thereafter, according to his lawyer. Dr. Lynch, widely regarded as England's first self-made internet billionaire and sometimes dubbed the "Bill Gates of Britain," was also a science and technology adviser to the Conservative Party governments of Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May. He served as a nonexecutive director of the BBC and was a trustee of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in England. At the time of his death, Dr. Lynch and his wife were worth an estimated 500 million pounds ($652 million), according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2024, down 352 million pounds ($459 million) from a year earlier. Dr. Lynch co-founded Autonomy with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt in 1996 to build early AI-driven search engines that could trawl through websites, email inboxes, police files or other datasets and return customized results. An Autonomy news release likened its product to a "smart bloodhound" that got smarter with use. Autonomy's search tool drew the notice of police units and intelligence agencies, which became major customers. Asked by Salon magazine in 2000 whether he had any qualms about privacy issues associated with how his products were used, Dr. Lynch argued that technology-based evidence, such as fingerprint searches, made it "very hard" to convict someone falsely. "That system has put a series of rapists and serial murderers away, and I don't lose any sleep at all about that," he told Salon. Autonomy saw its share price skyrocket during the first dot-com boom, and, by the late 2000s, its customers grew to include corporations such as eBay, Ford, Toyota and Fox as well as NATO and defense and intelligence agencies in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. As Autonomy's chief executive, the James Bond-loving Dr. Lynch developed a reputation as a swaggering and hard-charging leader. He drove an Aston Martin, named office rooms after James Bond villains such as Dr. No and Goldfinger, and installed a piranha tank at the company's headquarters. He expanded the firm rapidly through acquisitions in areas such as voice recognition. With significant revenue coming from the United States, Autonomy established a large office in San Francisco. Even after his success, he identified as an engineer more than a corporate leader, telling an interviewer in 2017 that "technical people" like himself were motivated by the one-upmanship of "showing someone else in a very nerdy way that your idea is better." Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Autonomy in 2011 sent a wave of excitement through the tech industry, even amid concerns from some British officials that one of England's most prominent software companies was being purchased by Americans. Dr. Lynch, whose hobbies included the husbandry of rare and threatened livestock breeds, told the British media at the time of the sale that he would use the proceeds to purchase more Red Poll cows for his farm in Suffolk. He later said he had "no choice" but to sell Autonomy, observing that U.K. companies lacked mechanisms like poison pills to block a takeover. HP's chief executive Léo Apotheker had wooed Dr. Lynch at a French seaside resort, believing Autonomy's AI technology could reinvigorate HP, which was struggling to remain relevant with its stodgy desktops and printers. Apotheker, the former head of German software giant SAP, was bullish on software, overruling skeptics at HP who worried that Autonomy's price tag was too high. Within weeks of announcing the deal, Apotheker was pushed out, with shareholders furious over Autonomy's astronomical cost and his efforts to sell off HP's cherished PC division. His replacement, Meg Whitman, fired Dr. Lynch as Autonomy's chief in May 2012 and began probing the unit's books, while also laying off tens of thousands of workers in the face of dire finances. In November 2012, HP announced it was writing down $8.8 billion of Autonomy's $11 billion valuation, claiming the British company had inflated its sales and engaged in "serious accounting improprieties." Some investors and analysts called the purchase one of the worst corporate deals in history. The debacle contributed to a diminished HP splitting itself in two in 2015 and the eventual sale of the Autonomy division. Dr. Lynch flatly denied HP's allegations, saying it was HP's mismanagement and infighting that destroyed Autonomy's value. He spent much of the next decade fighting legal cases in the U.K. and the United States. In January 2022, the U.K. High Court ruled against Dr. Lynch in a civil case brought by HP, finding that he had fraudulently inflated Autonomy's value. The court has yet to determine damages; HP has sought $5 billion from Dr. Lynch. Meanwhile, Dr. Lynch lost his fight against extradition to the United States to face criminal charges over the Autonomy sale. He was extradited in May 2023 and put under house arrest awaiting jury trial in San Francisco. The criminal trial began in March, with Dr. Lynch taking the stand in his own defense. He maintained his innocence, even though he acknowledged Autonomy was "not perfect." "The reality of life is that it's nuanced, and it is messy," he told the court. "If you take the microscope into a spotless kitchen, you will always find bacteria." To observers, the odds seemed against Dr. Lynch. Autonomy's former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, had been convicted in 2019 in the same court on similar charges of defrauding HP and was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Lynch's digressions on livestock on the stand drew reprimands from the judge to stay on topic. Yet the jury sided with Dr. Lynch, whose attorneys argued that he was focused on the big picture of running a company and was less involved in the details of accounting. After his acquittal in June, Dr. Lynch told the BBC that he was able to clear his name only because his enormous wealth allowed him to sustain a decade-long legal defense. Michael Richard Lynch was born on June 16, 1965, in Ilford, England. His mother, a nurse, and his father, a firefighter, were Irish immigrants. Dr. Lynch grew up near Chelmsford, northeast of London. Starting at 11 and on scholarship, he attended Bancroft's, a private school near London where Dr. Lynch nurtured an early interest in technology thanks in part to a math teacher who taught him to write code on punch cards. By the time Dr. Lynch was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, he showed promise in entrepreneurship. He built his own digital sampler, which became the cornerstone of an early start-up producing audio products for the music recording industry. He received a doctorate from Cambridge in signals processing and, in 1991, he co-founded a fingerprint verification company, Cambridge Neurodynamics, from which Autonomy eventually spun off. Autonomy is now a part of the Canadian company OpenText. After selling Autonomy, Dr. Lynch went on to found a venture capital firm, Invoke Capital, which invested in the British cybersecurity start-up Darktrace. In addition to Hannah, Dr. Lynch had another daughter. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. In a July interview with the Sunday Times of London, Dr. Lynch said he planned to use his new freedom to fund a British equivalent of the Innocence Project to help free defendants who had been wrongfully convicted. He told the paper that he had been contemplating what he termed "Saint Peter questions," explaining: "So you arrive at the Pearly Gates before being dispatched to the elevator down to the basement, and you say to Saint Peter, 'You know, just before I go, what was that all about? What was that?' "

Mike Lynch obituary

British tech entrepreneur who sold his Autonomy software group to Hewlett-Packard and was later cleared after a long-running US fraud case Mike Lynch, who has died aged 59 in the wreck of his yacht, was sometimes described as "Britain's Bill Gates". It was a huge exaggeration, but Lynch could claim two parallels with Gates: he developed world-leading technology (in his case in machine learning or AI) and, unlike so many UK scientists, he learned how to turn it into commercial success. Such was this success that his company, Autonomy, was valued at $11bn when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard in 2011, but the fall-out from the sale would come to overshadow his technological achievements, and lead to a national debate about the circumstances in which UK citizens may be extradited to the US. Lynch founded Autonomy with two partners in 1996. Its software enabled a computer to search huge quantities of diverse information, including phone calls, emails and videos, and recognise words. He told the Independent in 1999: "The way our technology works is to look at words and understand the relationships because it has seen a lot of content before. When it sees the word 'star' in the context of film, it knows it has nothing to do with the word moon. Because it works from text, it can deal with slang and with different languages." Autonomy became a leading company in Cambridge's Silicon Fen cluster and established a base in San Francisco. "We knew we had to be successful in America. It was a question of 'Go West young man, go to San Francisco and be ignored.' They found it hard to believe that anyone from England could have anything powerful." Lynch found what he called the "cold-hearted schmooze" to secure funding tough. But Autonomy's software, enabling computers to identify and match themes and ideas, and sort mammoth amounts of data, was licensed to more than 500 customers, including the US State Department and the BBC. It was listed on Nasdaq in 1998 and on the FTSE 100 in November 2000, although its value of £5.1bn would be halved within a few months in the collapse of the technology boom and accusations of over-promotion. In 2005 it bought a major US rival, Verity, for $500m. Lynch's profile rose with it. In 2006 he was appointed OBE for services to enterprise and the following year joined the board of the BBC. In 2011 he became a member of the government's Council for Science and Technology, and was named the most influential person in UK IT by Computer Weekly. In 2014 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Though quietly spoken, he had a reputation for toughness, coloured by a liking for James Bond, which led to Autonomy conference rooms being named after Bond villains, and a tank of piranha fish in reception. (Lynch claimed it belonged to one of his business partners.) Challenged about a company culture where people were "a little fanatical", he replied: "This is not the place for you if you want to work 9 to 5 and don't love your work." Born in Ilford, east London, to Michael, a firefighter, and Dolores, a nurse, and brought up in Chelmsford, Lynch won a scholarship to the independent Bancroft's school in Woodford Green, before taking a natural sciences degree at Cambridge, where his PhD in artificial neural networks, a form of machine learning, has been widely studied since. A saxophone player and jazz lover, he set up his first business, Lynett Systems, while still a student, to produce electronic equipment for the music industry. Later he would attribute some loss of hearing to adjusting synthesisers for bands. He quoted his own experience to highlight the difficulties of finding funding for startup businesses in Britain. He finally negotiated a £2,000 loan from one of the managers of Genesis in a Soho bar. Lynch's next venture came out of his research. In 1991 he founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, specialising in computer-based fingerprint recognition. Then he established Autonomy. The pinnacle of his success appeared to come in October 2011 when Autonomy was purchased by Hewlett-Packard for $11bn and Lynch made an estimated $800m. Shortly afterwards he established a new company, Invoke Capital, for investment in tech companies, and he and his wife, Angela Bacares, whom he had married in 2001, invested about £200m in Darktrace, a cybersecurity company. But just 13 months after the Autonomy sale, HP announced an $8.8bn writedown of the assets "due to serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations" which it claimed had artificially inflated the company's value. The authorities investigated, and while the UK Serious Fraud Office found insufficient evidence, in 2018 the US authorities indicted Lynch for fraud. Soon after, Autonomy's chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. In March 2019 HP followed up with a civil action for fraud in London. Lynch spent days in the witness box as the civil action stretched over nine months. It ended in January 2022 with the judge ruling that HP had substantially succeeded, but that damages would be much less than the $5bn they had claimed. Meanwhile the US authorities sought Lynch's extradition on criminal charges of conspiracy and fraud. In spite of representations by senior politicians and accusations that the US authorities were attempting to exercise "extraterritorial jurisdiction", a district judge ruled in favour of extradition. An application for judicial review and a further appeal failed, and in May 2023 Lynch was flown to the US to be held under house arrest in San Francisco, with the prospect of a 25-year sentence. Charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy, on 18 March this year Lynch pleaded not guilty, alongside his former vice-president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain. On 6 June, they were found not guilty of all charges. Chamberlain died after being hit by a car on 17 August. Lynch declared that he wanted to get back to what he loved doing - innovating. But he had little opportunity to do so. He soon embarked on a voyage to celebrate his acquittal, with family, colleagues and business associates. It ended with the sinking of his yacht, Bayesian - named after the 18th-century mathematician, Thomas Bayes, whose work on probability had informed much of his thinking - in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily. Lynch is survived by his wife and elder daughter, Esme. Their other daughter, Hannah, was also on board the Bayesian.

Friends and business leaders pay tribute to Mike Lynch after death confirmed | BreakingNews.ie

Figures from the business and technology sectors have paid tribute to Mike Lynch after the tech mogul's death was confirmed on Thursday. Mr Lynch was confirmed to have died aged 59 after a luxury yacht, Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily. He was the creator of software giant Autonomy, which grew to become one of the most prominent tech firms on the planet. David Tabizel, Mr Lynch's co-founder at Autonomy, said: "It looks like we've lost our dear Dr Mike Lynch. RIP. The world has lost a genius. His family have lost a giant of a man." As well as Autonomy, Mr Lynch was on the board of several prominent institutions, including the BBC and the British Library, and was a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Tim Davie, BBC director general, said: "Wise, generous and insightful, he played a particularly key role in accelerating our transformation as a digital organisation." The academy paid tribute to its "mentor, donor and former council member" on Thursday. In a statement, it said: "The trustee board, fellows and staff of the Royal Academy of Engineering are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Mike Lynch and send our profound condolences to his family." Eleanor Lightbody, chief executive of AI legal firm Luminance which Mr Lynch set up, said: "Mike was a visionary unlike any other. "He had a unique ability to spot the next technological revolution and solve tomorrow's challenges before others even knew they were coming. "Beyond that, it was his connection to people that made him special. "He had a steadfast belief in the UK's technology sector, in our incredible academic institutions, and in the talent he took the time to spot and nurture, regardless of background or discipline. "Above all, Mike was a kind man who had an impact on many and will be sorely missed. "I feel honoured to have known him, worked with him and learnt from him over the years. "The UK has lost someone with the means, authority, knowledge and drive to propel the UK into technological leadership, but his legacy will live on in all of the extraordinary businesses he built and mentored, as well as his family who are in my thoughts." Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton, a venture capital firm in London, said: "Mike Lynch's PhD at Cambridge put him at the very forefront of modern artificial intelligence. "More than just technology, however, Mike contributed vastly to its commercialisation. "Mike didn't just invent things, he built products and companies. "By my count, he founded over 10 technology companies and was instrumental in the building of three that became multi-billion dollar public companies (Autonomy, blinkx and Darktrace) - a personal track record without equal in the UK's technology ecosystem. "I worked for Mike for five years, and he then served on my board at blinkx for close to a decade. "I can share that he was an unfailingly supportive mentor who challenged and supported in equal measure. "Years before Covid, he mastered hybrid work, splitting his time between Cambridge (where the tech was built), London (where it was sold) and Suffolk (which he loved dearly), and juggled leading his work with being a loving and much-loved dad and husband. "He was famously fiercely competitive but, to his friends, equally fiercely loyal and always ready for a cup of tea and a chat. "The loss to the UK's technology ecosystem is incalculable, but I am as sad to lose an old friend and all my thoughts are with his wonderful family who are facing an unthinkable double tragedy at this time." A Darktrace spokesperson said: "We are shocked and saddened by the news confirming the death of Mike Lynch and the other victims of this terrible tragedy. "Mike was a founding investor in Darktrace, an active champion of the UK's technology sector and a committed husband and father. His loss will be felt by many. Our thoughts are with his family and all the families who have lost loved ones in this awful event." Family friend Patrick Jacob said: "Mike's ability to identify and solve complex problems was phenomenal, as was his ability to simplify and explain them. "As a friend, Mike was never dull and always ready for a lively debate on almost any topic conducted with intelligence and convivial vigour. "He could be challenging and direct, but I never came away from seeing him without feeling my life was enriched by the experience." Martina King, chief executive of Featurespace, a fraud prevention company, said: "It is a high statistical probability that Featurespace wouldn't be a thriving technology company without Mike. "Our co-founders, Professor Bill Fitzgerald and Dave Excell, were inspired by Mike's combination of intellect and commercial acumen. "They benefited from his friendship and guidance. "Mike's personal investment in Featurespace supported the development of an invention that has proved fundamental in the progress of AI, and he served as a Non-Executive Director for over 10 years from 2008 - 2019. "Mike was a true champion of the UK technology sector, including the need for greater diversity, and advocated for many female leaders, including me. "Cambridge, the technology sector, colleagues and friends will be unable to calculate the loss of this truly extraordinary, intellectual, inventive, humorous and generous man. He will be sorely and deeply missed." The chief executive of the British Library, Sir Roly Keating, said: "Mike's extraordinary understanding of technology, combined with his passion for the British Library's mission to share knowledge, made him an invaluable member of our board. "He was thoughtful, perceptive and supportive, and will be deeply missed by all of us who worked with him in his time here." Meanwhile, the chairman of the Francis Crick Institute described Mike Lynch as a "human being of great ability". Mr Lynch was a member of the Create The Change fundraising board, set up by Cancer Research UK and which helped fund the building of the Institute, a biomedical research centre. Lord John Browne said: "Mike Lynch should be remembered as the person who catalysed a breed of deep tech entrepreneurs in the UK. "His ideas and his personal vision were a powerful contribution to science and technology in both Britain and globally. Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Mike Lynch and all those who have been affected by this tragedy. "Together with his wife, Angela, Mike was a valued donor to Cancer Research UK and a member of the board for our Create The Change campaign, which funded the building of the Francis Crick Institute. Technology industry group TechUK added to the tributes. A spokesman said: "Mike Lynch was a hugely significant and pioneering figure in the UK technology sector." President of the Royal Society, Sir Adrian Smith, said: "Mike Lynch was an exceptional scientist, mathematician and entrepreneur, who turned his knowledge of Bayesian statistics and pattern recognition into innovative and successful technology companies. "As president of the Royal Society, a fellow statistician and friend, I offer my deepest condolences to Mike's family, and all of those affected by this tragic news."