Following the sinking of his luxurious yacht on Monday, Reuters has reported that the physique of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been recovered.
Lynch was amongst six individuals who have been confirmed to have died when the yacht sank after being hit by a sea twister, referred to as a waterspout, within the early hours of Monday 19 August off the coast of Sicily.
On the time of writing, Reuters reported that Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter remains to be lacking. On Wednesday, 4 our bodies had been recovered from the sunken yacht.
Lynch’s former enterprise associate, Stephen Chamberlain, died on Monday after being hit by a automobile whereas working.
Information analytics genius
Within the fast-paced world of knowledge analytics and the synthetic intelligence (AI) revolution, Lynch performed a major function in advancing information science and information analytics each right here within the UK and globally.
Lynch’s identify and status are endlessly linked to the destiny of Autonomy, a UK firm that within the late Nineties was doing issues with information insights that appeared nearly not possible to attain with the tech obtainable on the time. But HP’s makes an attempt to discredit him and Autonomy imply the know-how – and the geniuses who developed it – have taken a again seat to the authorized wranglings and fraud claims. The software program developed by Autonomy lives on, after three modifications of possession, and is considered main the doc mining and analytics know-how market.
Whereas Lynch is most carefully linked with Autonomy, which he co-founded in 1996, he’s additionally a co-founder of safety agency Darktrace, which makes use of synthetic intelligence to deal with cyber safety threats.
In 2013, he arrange enterprise capital agency Invoke Ventures, which has funded a variety of startups, together with Darktrace and Sophia Genetics, an organization specialising in data-driven medication.
Lynch additionally based Featurespace, a platform for fraud and monetary crime administration, Luminance, a synthetic intelligence platform, and Hearable, an AI-driven cell software for individuals with listening to loss.
Previous to organising Autonomy, Lynch learn pure sciences at Cambridge College, the place he additionally gained a PhD and held a analysis fellowship in adaptive sample recognition.
In 2011, he offered Autonomy to HP for £7.1bn. On the time, HP had ambitions to maneuver out of the PC {hardware} enterprise and turn out to be a software-focused firm. However this technique did not win shareholder approval and led to the {hardware} maker submitting a fraud case, which ended up within the US, the place Lynch and the previous Autonomy head of finance, Chamberlain, had been charged with fiddling the accounts to extend the worth of the enterprise.
HP’s product transient for Autonomy’s flagship product, Idol, described the product as providing distinctive sample matching powered by statistical algorithms that recognise distance in concepts, ideas and context in actual time. Even with at present’s superior analytics, graph databases and AI, these are troublesome issues to attain. The product was offered to Micro Focus and ended up as a part of OpenText. Autonomy’s Idol lives on as OpenText Data Discovery, which is taken into account the market chief in keeping with the Forrester Wave for Doc mining and analytics platforms, Q2 2024, revealed in Might 2024, forward of AI behemoths like Google, Amazon Internet Providers (AWS) and Microsoft.
Regardless of being a UK entrepreneur, the house secretary, Priti Patel, did nothing to cease Lynch being extradited to the US in 2022 to face trial. Former Tory ministers Andrew Mitchell, David Davis, Lord Maude of Horsham and Lord Deben, together with former Liberal Democrat enterprise secretary Vince Cable, had beforehand written a letter to The Occasions describing how the extradition could be akin to the UK surrendering its sovereignty.
In June this yr, Lynch was acquitted of all prices, following a 12-week trial in San Francisco, and it has been reported that the Sicily occasion aboard his luxurious yacht, Bayesian, was held to have fun the acquittal.
Most influential particular person in IT
In 2011, Lynch was voted in Pc Weekly’s UKtech50 as probably the most influential particular person in IT. On the time, he stated the UK wanted to grasp how essential IT is to its economic system. On condition that the nation is small and has restricted pure sources, he stated it was completely essential to spend money on the UK’s mental and progressive talents. These phrases are as true at present as they had been over 20 years in the past.
“I do consider that probably the most promising areas is round the usage of IT know-how. And we do have world-class IT right here: ARM, Autonomy, a collection of up-and-coming companies, world-class universities,” he stated.
Strategic thinker
Final yr, Lynch posted an article on LinkedIn by which he mentioned the alternatives that AI instruments like ChatGPT provide staff. Within the article, he stated: “Having next-generation AI that automates the menial, repetitive duties that plague so many professions isn’t any dangerous factor. It simply requires people to study to work and assume in another way, to let go of the 90% of duties that an AI may do higher and give attention to the ten% that an AI won’t ever have the ability to replicate. Strategic considering and creativity to call a pair.”
Lynch additionally stated there isn’t a motive why the UK can’t be a part of the AI story: “We’re house to a few of the highest 10 analysis universities on this planet and world-class tech expertise. With momentum round AI at fever pitch and the British authorities inserting know-how on the core of their development ambitions, now could be our second to lean into this.”
