After a superyacht capsized in Italy , a British tech entrepreneur is missing , sparking a desperate manhunt as the authorities have already pulled one body out of the water.
Mike Lynch is thought to be one of the 22 people thrown into the water after a nasty storm capsized a yacht dubbed the Bayesian off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning.
By early in the morning, 15 of those 22 had been rescued, but Lynch remained missing. One of the rescued was confirmed to be his wife, Angela Bacares.
Who is Mike Lynch?
Lynch conducted business in both the U.K. and America and has become a household name in the former — and, amid developments in some recent lawsuits out of California and elsewhere in the U.S., he's also starting to become well-known in the latter.
Lynch got his start in IT, making a vast fortune in the industry. He co-founded Autonomy, a tech company, after receiving a nearly $2,600 loan in 1996, and built it up into one of the U.K.'s leading firms before it was acquired by tech giant Hewlett-Packard.
By the time he sold the firm in 2011, Autonomy was worth $11 billion, and he reportedly netted around $647,400 from the sale — an astronomical amount in today's monetary amounts.
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His ventures in the tech industry have led to him being dubbed "Britain's Bil Gates" and cemented his status as one of the U.K.'s — and the world's — wealthy elites. But they've also landed him in legal hot water, both in the U.K. and the U.S.
His sale of Autonomy was mired in fraud accusations, and he was the subject of civil litigation in the U.K. before he was extradited to the U.S. in 2023 to face more charges in a trial that began in March of this year.
The trial, which took place in San Francisco, saw him acquitted of 15 charges stemming from conspiracy and wire fraud after he was accused of inflating Autonomy's wealth. He had been placed on house arrest after being jailed upon his extradition, footing a $100 million bail. He faced two decades in prison if convicted.
After the 2011 sale, Lynch went on to form venture capital firm Invoke Capital, which also owned shares of a cybersecurity company he founded called Darktrace, of which his wife owns most of the shares.
Lynch was born in Ilford, Essex, England, in June 1965 and raised in nearby Chelmsford, where his mother reportedly worked as a nurse and his father was a fireman. They both reportedly have Irish roots.
The millionaire once said of his father, "He realized the importance of education, so that was something that was very much fostered in my home." At the age of 11, he reportedly won a scholarship to Bancroft's School in Woodford, Essex, which is reportedly a high-end private school.
From there, Lynch went on to attend Cambridge University, where he studied physics, math and biochemistry. He eventually developed an interest in electrical sciences, then went on to complete his PhD. His doctoral thesis was reportedly one of the most read in the university's library.
Then, he received that $2,600 loan from a pop promotor he reportedly met in a pub, then developed Autonomy in 1996 after founding Cambridge Neurodynamics in 1991, a company that was based on computer fingerprinting technology.
In 2006, Lynch was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to enterprise, and that same year, he was also appointed to the board of the BBC and was also elected years later to David Cameron's council for science and technology in 2011.
Superyacht capsizes
Early Monday morning, the megayacht Bayesian, which is reportedly owned by Bacares, sunk about 164 feet below the surface after a nasty storm — one that reportedly featured a tornado — struck the ship.
A mother and her 1-year-old son were reportedly tossed into the water while they slept and later rescued. By the late morning into the afternoon, 15 people had been rescued. Six were still missing, and one was discovered dead — a chef with Canadian origins who reportedly lives in Antigua.
The boat had reportedly still been docked at the harbor when it capsized. The investigation into the crash as well as a search for the missing persons was desperately underway as of Monday afternoon.
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