Mike Lynch

Michael Richard Lynch OBE DL FRS FREng (born 16 June 1965) is a British technology entrepreneur who co-founded Autonomy Corporation and founded Invoke Capital. He then became a co-founder, alongside Invoke Capital, of cybersecurity company Darktrace. He has also had various other roles, including in an advisory capacity.

Following a degree, PhD and post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, he applied his research in machine learning to set up software companies and become a major figure in Silicon Fen. The sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 led to accusations of fraud and resulted in civil litigation in the UK and Lynch's extradition to the US, where he went on trial in March 2024 and was found not guilty of all charges in June 2024.

He has been missing since 19 August 2024, after the family superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily.

Early life and education

Lynch was born in Ilford, London Borough of Redbridge, in 1965. and grew up near Chelmsford in Essex. His mother was a nurse from County Tipperary and his father a firefighter from County Cork in Ireland.

Aged 11, he won a scholarship to Bancroft's School, Woodford. He was later the lead Patron of the Bancroft's Foundation, which was established to provide means-tested scholarship support to enable bright pupils to study at the school regardless of family income. From Bancroft's he went to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study Natural Sciences. After graduating he went on to study for a PhD in artificial neural networks (a form of machine learning) under the supervision of Peter Rayner, director of studies in engineering at Christ's College, and produced a thesis with the title Adaptive techniques in signal processing and connectionist models. He then undertook a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition.

Career

Lynch set up his first company in the late 1980s, while he was studying for his PhD. Lynett Systems Ltd was financed with a £2,000 loan negotiated in a bar, and produced designs and audio products for the music industry, including electronic synthesizers and a sampler for the Atari ST. In 1991 he founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialized in computer-based fingerprint recognition. There were three spin-offs from Cambridge Neurodynamics: Neurascript, which searched business documents based on character recognition and was bought by German company Dicom in 2004; NCorp, which searched databases; and Autonomy which searched unstructured sources including phone calls, emails and videos.

Autonomy was founded in 1996 by Lynch, David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt. With Lynch as chief executive officer (CEO), the search software company grew to become one of the UK's top 100 public companies, and a leading company in Silicon Fen. In October 2011 Autonomy was sold to Hewlett-Packard for more than $11 billion (£8.6 billion). The sale would eventually lead to civil and criminal cases against Lynch and Autonomy's chief financial officer (CFO) Sushovan Hussain.

After the sale of Autonomy, Lynch founded a venture capital firm called Invoke Capital. One of the first companies backed by Invoke Capital was cybersecurity firm Darktrace. Invoke Capital became the biggest shareholder of Darktrace, with Lynch and his wife Angela Bacares being the second biggest, holding shares worth nearly £200 million. Many of the staff at Darktrace, including its CEO, had moved across from Autonomy and Lynch was a member of the board until 2018 and continued as a member of the advisory council until 2021. Lynch was a member of the Darktrace science and technology council until February 2023. As well as having to deal with questions about Lynch's involvement with the company, Darktrace has also had to counter scepticism about its technology which analysts had referred to as "snake oil".

Other technology companies backed by Invoke Capital include Featurespace, which specialises in software to detect and prevent fraud and financial crime. Invoke Capital has invested in the legal technology firm Luminance, established in collaboration with Slaughter and May. Sophia Genetics, a Swiss medical data company, is also backed by Invoke Capital.

As a leading technology entrepreneur, Lynch held a number of positions on boards and committees. When he was charged with fraud in the United States he resigned from his role as a government advisor on the Council for Science and Technology and from Royal Society committees. He had previously been on the board of Cambridge Enterprise, Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, the BBC, the British Library, Nesta, and the Francis Crick Institute.

Personal life

Lynch is married to Angela Bacares and they have two daughters. His entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as jazz saxophone and preserving rare breeds. He keeps a herd of Red Poll cattle on his Loudham Hall estate at Pettistree, in East Suffolk.