Darktrace co-founder Mike Lynch presumed dead after yacht sinks
The tech entrepreneur and his daughter are among six presumed dead as divers fight to access the sunken superyacht.
The British co-founder of UK-based cybersecurity company Darktrace and enterprise software company Autonomy is one of six presumed dead after the superyacht they were traveling on, the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily after encountering a strong storm on August 19. .
The ship was carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, and daughter Hannah. While Bacares was among the 15 rescued from the yacht, Hannah Lynch is also presumed dead.
Others presumed dead in the sinking are Jonathan Bloomer of Morgan Stanley and his wife Judy, and Chris Morvillo of the law firm Clifford Chance and his wife Neda.
Divers attempted to access the ship a day after it sank, but have so far been unable to access the cabins on board, where the Italian coast guard believes the missing passengers are located.
“We do not exclude that they are not inside the ship, but we know that the ship sank quickly. We assume that the six missing people may not have had time to get out,” coast guard spokesman Vincenzo Zagarola told the media.
Lynch was recently acquitted of 15 counts of fraud in a US court for the 2011 sale of Autonomy – now known as HP Autonomy – to Hewlett Packard for $11.1 billion. Lynch told the UK Sunday schedule in July that he was pleased to have avoided a prison sentence.
“I have several medical problems that would have made my survival very difficult,” Lynch said.
“If this had gone wrong, it would have been the end of life as I knew it in any sense.”
Lynch founded Autonomy in 1996 and co-founded Darktrace in 2013 with several cybersecurity experts and mathematicians from a company he owns, Invoke Capital.
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo offered to take over Darktrace in April 2024 for $5.3 billion.
Diving teams from the Italian fire service continue their efforts to access the interior of the yacht.
