Tributes have poured in for Dr Mike Lynch, whose tragic death in a yacht disaster was confirmed this morning.
A divisive figure in the HP channel, the man known as ‘the British Bill Gates’ was “ready to start again” after being cleared of fraud charges, his friend Lord Deben said.
“This was the beginning of a new life for Mike,” Deben – the former Conservative MP John Gummer – told Times Radio while Lynch was still missing, according to The Guardian.
“He came back to be ready to start again. He made such a contribution to Britain. His companies have put British IT in the forefront, and he was going to do it again, and we pray that he can do it again.”
In a LinkedIn post he described as “almost too difficult to write”, recently retired industry analyst Richard Holway MBE characterised the controversial tech tycoon as a “unique British tech talent”, meanwhile.
“Goodness knows what he could have achieved next,” Holway wrote.
UK tech titan
Lynch co-founded and headed up Autonomy ahead of its $11.1bn sale to HP in 2011.
But the deal turned sour after HP claimed it had been duped into overpaying for the British search software vendor.
In 2013, Lynch then co-founded Cambridge-based cybersecurity outfit Darktrace, which now has 2,400 employees and revenues of close to $700m.
Following a 13-year-long legal battle with HP that saw him extradited to the US, Lynch was finally acquitted in June. Autonomy CFO Shushovan Hussain was jailed for five years in 2019, however.
Lynch remained a source of controversy within the HP/HPE channel after the episode proved a thorn in its side during the Meg Whitman era.
The long-running saga was a traumatic and protracted episode in Lynch’s life that both Deben and Holway decried.
“I have never opined on Mike’s innocence or guilt. Just that the way he had been treated was terrible as the US/UK Extradition Treaty is so one-sided and unfair,” Holway wrote.
“It should never have happened,” Deben said.
Deben stressed that Lynch would happily lend him a hand on trifling IT questions.
“When I wanted to understand some complicated thing about IT, he would explain in the simplest manner. Even though he carried his immense knowledge and learning so lightly and was so available to anyone,” he said.
Writing on X, Autonomy co-founder David Tabizel dubbed Lynch “a giant of a man”.
It looks like we’ve lost our dear Dr Mike Lynch. RIP. The world has lost a genius. His family have lost a giant of a man. #MikeLynch #Autonomy pic.twitter.com/eBesEwOe88— David Tabizel (@Tabizel) August 21, 2024
Lynch is among five people confirmed dead after his 184-ft luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning. His daughter Hannah is still unaccounted for. He is survived by one daughter and his wife, Angela Bacares.
