Who was Mike Lynch? The controversial tech tycoon has been found dead after a superyacht sank.

The company produced designs and audio products for the music industry. One invention included a sampler for the Atari ST known as the Lynex. That was followed by the ADAS sampler for Atari, Mac, and PC.

Chandratillake told Business Insider: “Mike is a uniquely talented entrepreneur, especially within the European ecosystem. It’s rare to find someone who is a PhD in data science but also a visionary product marketer and talented organization builder.

“I learned a great deal about business, product, marketing and the competitive element that is at the core of really successful organizations through the opportunity I had working for him as Autonomy’s US CTO. Years later when he sold the company to HP, I wasn’t surprised that it was the largest AI exit ever and one of the top three technology exits from Europe in history.”

Autonomy made a number of other sizable acquisitions including: search software rival Verity ($500 million, December 2005); email archiving and litigation support company Zantaz ($375 million, July 2007); records management software firm Meridio Holdings (£20 million, October 2007); enterprise content management firm Interwoven ($775 million, January 2009); and online backup provider Iron Mountain Digital ($380 million, May 2011).

In October 2015, Lynch counter-sued HP in London’s High Court for more than $150 million (£116 million) over the allegations of massive fraud it against him. Lynch accused Whitman of trashing his reputation and hampering his venture capital fundraising efforts.

The company’s technology, which can spot unusual email activity and suspicious file uploads, is underpinned by complex maths that was developed at Cambridge University.

“The reason I liked it was that it was a completely new approach,” Lynch told Business Insider in 2016. “Most of what’s out there in cybersecurity is based on knowing what you’re looking for. So things like anti-virus and that sort of stuff, or trying to build a big wall around the outside of your company, a boundary.

“The problem is that the world’s moved on and the attacks no longer have signatures. You can get kits that make attacks that don’t look like anything that’s been done before. But also every day you allow loads of people to walk through your wall and so the wall is pretty porous. The reality I was familiar with from some of my other roles as directors of large companies is that it’s very, very hard to keep stuff out. The reality is almost every company is infiltrated. So you have to take a different approach. You have to do it much more like an immune system.”

The US Department of Justice filed 14 charges of fraud and conspiracy against Lynch in November 2018. The charges carried a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and US prosecutors wanted to see Lynch give up the $815 million he made from the Autonomy sale.

Mike Lynch was confirmed dead by Italian authorities on August 22 after his family superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily three days earlier.

He was declared missing after a violent storm capsized Bayesian, a luxury sailing vessel. His body and those of several other passengers were recovered a few days later.