Mike Lynch is a British tech entrepreneur and businessman who is most known for founding Autonomy, a software company specialising in enterprise search and knowledge management. The software was employed by companies to analyse vast amounts of data, leveraging the principles of Bayesian inference – a statistical theory developed by the 18th-century statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister, Thomas Bayes.

Autonomy was founded in 1996 and became one of the UK's most successful technology companies. This led to its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011 for $11.7 billion.

In his earlier life, Lynch studied physics, maths and biochemistry at Cambridge University, specialising in adaptive pattern recognition. His doctoral thesis is thought to be one of the most widely-read pieces of research in the university’s library.

The founding of Autonomy followed Lynch’s launching of other startups, most notably one that specialised in automatic numberplate, fingerprint and facial recognition software for the police.

In 1991, Mr Lynch co-founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, a company focused on computer-based fingerprint detection and recognition. Though of all of Lynch’s ventures, Autonomy is the company that made it big.

Autonomy’s fast-paced growth and success since its founding saw Lynch earn a number of awards and accolades. Lynch's successes earned him roles as a science advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron, a non-executive director at the BBC, and an OBE in 2006 for his contributions to enterprise.

Invoke Capital

In recent years, Lynch has become a prolific investor in the tech industry, having founded venture capital fund Invoke Capital. According to its website, Invoke Capital has a: “deep expertise in identifying and commercialising artificial intelligence research and a close relationship with the University of Cambridge, Invoke exists to realise the commercial possibilities of Britain’s extraordinary science and deep technology base.”

Since 2012, Invoke has played a key role in establishing, developing, and advancing significant technologies, subsequently assembling the right teams to scale them into global businesses.

Invoke’s portfolio includes Darktrace, a cyber-AI company with over 1,500 employees worldwide, Luminance, an award-winning machine learning platform for the legal sector, and Featurespace, an AI-driven fraud detection engine. Invoke also exited from Sophia Genetics, a data-driven medicine specialist, in 2020.

Sale to HP

After Autonomy’s success, it caught the eye of HP, who bought the company for $11 billion back in 2011, which is thought to have made Lynch more than $800 million.

Though the sale of the company started a 13 year long legal saga.

A year after the acquisition, HP claimed that it had discovered “serious accounting improprieties.”

In 2018, US prosecutors brought charges against Mr Lynch, alleging that he had artificially inflated the company's value. They claimed he had hidden the firm's loss-making hardware reselling operations and accused him of intimidating or paying off individuals who raised concerns.

If found guilty, Lynch faced a potential prison sentence of over 20 years in the US if convicted of the fraud and conspiracy charges. According to The Times, he spent 13 months under house arrest while awaiting the trial, which concluded in June.

It was only in June of this year that Lynch was cleared of these charges.