Mike Lynch, who was recently acquitted in the HP Autonomy fraud case, is missing after his yacht capsized off Sicily

Update: Authorities have not yet been granted access to the interior of the sunken yacht and Mike Lynch remains missing. In the meantime, more details have emerged.

The accident appears to have been caused by a severe storm and a resulting tornado-like column of water that caught and damaged the yacht. Among the six other people still missing are Lynch's 18-year-old daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International. The voyage was dedicated to celebrating Lynch's acquittal of charges in the U.S., and several members of his legal team were also on board. (The vessel was registered to Lynch's wife, one of the survivors.) In a terrible coincidence, the other person acquitted in Lynch's trial – Stephen Chamberlain, chief financial officer of Autonomy – had died just a week earlier when he was hit by a car while jogging. The original article continues below.

Mike Lynch, the investor and well-known founder of the British technology company Autonomy, was reported missing at sea after the yacht he was on Bayesiancapsized in a storm off the coast of Sicily early Monday morning.

TechCrunch confirmed through a source familiar with the rescue that Lynch is one of six people missing from the boat. Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, is one of the 15 rescued. One body has been found.

The news is a dramatic, tragic development for one of the most colorful and sometimes controversial figures in the British technology industry.

Lynch's technology company Autonomy was acquired by HP in 2011 for $11 billion – a milestone for British technology. But the deal quickly turned into a fiasco, and HP sued Lynch and other company executives, claiming the company had been misled in the deal.

HP claimed the deal resulted in a $4 billion loss – money the company subsequently demanded from Lynch and its former chief financial officer. Lynch (pictured above left) has long claimed he acted in good faith and was being made a scapegoat for a merger gone wrong.

This legal drama lasted more than a decade and included a number of other tricky chapters, including Lynch's extradition to the US and a lot of very bad publicity for Lynch himself. It also led to a second civil trial, which took place in the UK in 2022 and which Lynch lost.

The US criminal trial, in which Lynch was accused of 15 counts of fraud and conspiracy, took place in San Francisco at the beginning of the year. Lynch was finally acquitted in June.

“I am delighted with today's verdict and grateful for the jury's attention to the facts over the past ten weeks. My deepest thanks go to my legal team for their tireless work on my behalf,” Lynch said at the time. “I look forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovation in my field.”

In the intervening years, Lynch made a name for himself as an investor in the UK, most notably as the founder of Invoke Capital. The venture capital firm was the largest investor in cybersecurity company Darktrace, a tie-up that was not without controversy. It also invested in Sophia Genetics, Featurespace and Luminance, among others. And it seemed that this was the path he wanted to pursue.

Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues. We will update this post as soon as we learn more.