Michael Richard Lynch (16 June 1965 – 19 August 2024) was a British technology entrepreneur who co-founded Autonomy Corporation, Invoke Capital and Darktrace.

Lynch was celebrating his acquittal with a cruise on his family's superyacht, Bayesian, when it sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily on 19 August 2024.

[4] He was later the lead patron of the Bancroft's Foundation, which was established to provide means tested scholarships to able students regardless of family income.

[2] After graduating he did postgraduate research in artificial neural networks and was awarded a PhD in 1990 for a thesis on signal processing, supervised by Peter Rayner.

Lynett Systems Ltd was financed with a £2,000 loan negotiated in a bar, and produced designs and audio products including synthesisers and a sampler for the Atari ST.[9][10] In 1991, he founded Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialised in computer-based fingerprint recognition.

[9] There were three corporate spin-offs from Cambridge Neurodynamics: In 1996, Lynch founded Autonomy, a search software company, with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt.

[4][15] Other technology companies backed by Invoke Capital include Featurespace, which specialises in software to detect and prevent fraud and financial crime.

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 served as a board member of Cambridge Enterprise, Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, the BBC, the British Library, Nesta, and the Francis Crick Institute.

Earlier in 2018 Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance chief officer, had been found guilty of fraud in the US and sentenced to five years in prison.

The case was heard by Mr Justice Hildyard sitting for 93 days over a period of nine months at the Rolls Building.

[23][24] While the civil trial was taking place in London, the American authorities were seeking Lynch's extradition to face criminal charges of conspiracy and fraud in the United States.

Five former cabinet ministers signed a letter to The Times arguing against the extradition, and David Davis MP said in parliament that it was an attempt by the American authorities to "exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction".

[28] Lynch applied for a judicial review; the application was rejected by High Court Judge Mr Justice Swift in January 2022 and Home Secretary Priti Patel approved his extradition.

[36] In 2014, Lynch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)[37] and appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Suffolk.

In the early hours of 19 August, the yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, outside the port of Porticello, during a powerful storm, with 22 people on board.