Mike Lynch

Advisor at Darktrace

Having pioneered three of the biggest success stories in UK tech, Autonomy, Blinkx and Darktrace, Mike is regarded as Britain’s most established technology entrepreneur. Spun out from his previous company, Neurodynamics, which he sold in 2005, Mike founded Autonomy in 1996 based on technology invented at Cambridge University, where Dr Lynch studied Information Sciences, received a Ph.D. and held a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition. He served as CEO of Autonomy for over fifteen years, during which time it became one of the UK’s most successful technology companies on the FTSE 100. Autonomy was acquired by HP for $11 billion in 2011.

Mike founded Invoke Capital in 2012 to support world-leading fundamental technology businesses emerging across Europe. Since then, Invoke has been instrumental in developing and scaling prominent UK tech companies from innovative start-ups out of Cambridge University into global businesses. Portfolio companies include Luminance, an award-winning machine learning platform for the legal industry, and Darktrace, a world-leading cyber AI company that employs more than 1,300 people globally.

Referred to as the UK’s answer to Bill Gates, Mike has won numerous awards, including Computer Weekly’s ‘Most Influential Person of the Year’ and the Chartered Institute for IT’s award for Outstanding Contribution to IT in 2011. He was awarded an OBE for Services to Enterprise in 2006 and was elected to the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology in 2011. Mike is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an honorary fellow of Christ’s College Cambridge. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in April 2014 and a trustee of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in 2010.

Mike is a generous supporter of many causes, including the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Cancer Research UK, Cambridge University, The Prince’s Trust’s technology group and a number of educational charities. He also contributes to conservation charities and preserves rare breeds.

Timeline

  • Advisor

    Current role