Rise to the top Born to an Irish immigrant family and raised in London in the 1960s, Lynch had a modest upbringing but won a scholarship to the private Bancroft's School aged 11. He went on to graduate from Cambridge University and subsequently founded the business that would make his name: Autonomy. The software company, set up in 1996, used complex statistical analysis to help businesses manage their data.
Autonomy grew rapidly and joined the ranks of Britain's blue chips on the FTSE 100 before being sold to HP for more than £8 billion in 2011. Lynch used his wealth to become a founding investor in Darktrace, the FTSE 100 cybersecurity company, and set up venture capital firm Invoke Capital to back other start-ups. His successes once led him to be lauded as "Britain's Bill Gates".
For 13 years, however, Lynch was dogged by claims that his success was built on the back of fraud. HP wrote off much of the value of Autonomy shortly after acquiring the business and accused Lynch of exaggerating the business's success to get HP to overpay. In 2022, Lynch lost a $US5 billion ($7.
4 billion) fraud civil dispute against HP in the British High Court over the sale, and was later charged with multiple counts of criminal fraud by the US government for his alleged role. Against the odds Last year, he was extradited from Britain to stand trial before a California court. He faced up to 25 years in prison.
In the run-up to the trial, the entrepreneur spent months under house arrest with con.