Tech Billionaire Mike Lynch and Daughter Missing After Yacht Sinks Off Sicily Coast

The missing people in this Monday morning's sinking of a yacht off the coast of Sicily include the famous British tech entrepreneur who founded software company Autonomy, Mike Lynch. A onetime Forbes-listed billionaire was among 21 people on its luxury board, including his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch. Reuters quoted the Italian coast guard as saying the incident had been caused by a tornado hitting the yacht.Fifteen were rescued, one confirmed fatality, and searching continues in missing – which includes two Americans .

Mike Lynch set up Autonomy back in 1996 with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt. The product developed by it was the software that could analyze and absorb vast numbers of data. It won major clients including the U.K. It had a great clientele that went on to include the U.S. and UK governments, Shell, and BMW. In 2011, Autonomy was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in a deal that shortly afterward turned contentious when HP took an $8.8 billion writedown, citing "serious accounting improprieties" that inflated Autonomy's value. The charge brought both civil and criminal charges against Lynch, to which he has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. UK Serious Fraud Office

did take up HP's serious allegations against it back in 2013, though it in 2015 closed the case for lack of evidence. On the other hand, it was 2022 with HP that really did nail its arguments in the fraud case against Lynch in the UK, where he has been ordered that Autonomy did indeed inflate its value artificially. While HP had been grasping after $5 billion in damages, the final payment is likely to be a fraction of that figure. Back in June 2024, a jury acquitted Lynch of 15 counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud, at the end of a three-month trial in San Francisco. He claimed he never misled at trial about the value of Autonomy. Known to the British press as "Britain's Bill Gates," he has a Ph.D. in signal processing and connectionist models from Cambridge University, where his research—according to the institution's library—has been among the most viewed.

He ran Autonomy with a sharp management style, occasionally naming office rooms after James Bond villains. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his services to technology and, in 2010, was invited by then UK Prime Minister David Cameron to sit on the advisory council for Science and Technology. After the sale of Autonomy, Lynch established Invoke Capital, the venture capital vehicle he used to back firms like Darktrace, a cyber-security business, and Luminance, which deals in legal software.

Missing Tycoon and His Daughter Searched For as Luxury Yacht Sinks, Leaving Tech and Business Communities Stunned at Possibly Losing One of Its Most Influential Figures.