By C. J. De Mel, Jadetimes News
A famous British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch, and his daughter have gone missing after his luxury yacht, the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily. The family-linked yacht went down during severe weather, killing one and leaving six others missing. Those rescued included his wife, Angela Bacares.
Lynch is best known for co-founding British tech firm Autonomy back in 1996, pioneering data analysis with software based on "Bayesian inference." Such was the rapid growth of the firm in the late 1990s and early 2000s that Mike Lynch was awarded an OBE for his services to UK enterprise in 2006.
2011 saw Lynch selling Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion (£8.6 billion), securing his reputation as one of Britain's leading figures in technology—a status ranking alongside Microsoft's Bill Gates. But the sale soon became embroiled with controversy when HP accused Lynch of artificially inflating the company's value, leading to years of legal wrangling in the US. Lynch had faced fraud charges on several counts but was acquitted in June 2024. He said his acquittal was due to having the money to fight the case vigorously.
Before he had made his fortune with Autonomy, Lynch had obtained a PhD in mathematical computing from Cambridge University and, in 1986, had co-founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, a company specializing in computer-based fingerprint recognition. His work in the field of AI and tech innovation saw him appointed to the UK government's Council for Science and Technology in 2011.
The legal battles did not deter Lynch from continuing to make a mark in the technology world. He set up a venture capital firm, Invoke Capital, which invested in Darktrace—a British cybersecurity company—back in 2013. Lynch sat on the board of Darktrace until early 2024.
The disaster at sea is a personal tragedy for Lynch, who shares a home on the Loudham Hall estate in Suffolk with his family. Rescue operations are continuing in an attempt to recover Lynch and his daughter, as well as other missing persons from the Bayesian, with the authorities on the Sicilian coast taking charge of coordinating the search.
The news comes just days after the death of Stephen Chamberlain, who had been a co-defendant with Lynch in the Autonomy trial. He died after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire.
