My story today is incredible. It’s just too wild and hits too close to home to ignore. It’s about Mike Lynch, Autonomy, and a string of coincidences so unbelievable that not even a Hollywood screenwriter could dream them up.
So, let’s start at the beginning.
Autonomy was founded in 1996 in Cambridge, UK, by Mike Lynch, David Tabizel, and Richard Gaunt. The company went public in 1998 at £0.30 per share on EASDAQ, Europe’s version of Nasdaq. Autonomy’s core product was an enterprise search technology, called IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer), which supposedly used a pattern recognition technique based on the Bayesian algorithm. Keep that name "Bayesian" in mind—it’s going to pop up again later.
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| Sailing yacht Bayesian |
Over time, Autonomy expanded its portfolio by acquiring a range of companies, including Verity (search), Zantaz (email archiving), Meridio (records management), Interwoven (web content management), iManage (legal document management), and Iron Mountain Digital (archiving and e-discovery). They even scooped up the content solutions from Computer Associates. Through these acquisitions, Autonomy became a major player in the content management space, going head-to-head with giants like EMC/Documentum, IBM/FileNet, Microsoft SharePoint, and OpenText.
Around 2009-2010, Autonomy became a significant challenge for me while I was leading product marketing at OpenText. It wasn’t that we were losing many deals to them—Microsoft was actually the much tougher competitor in that regard. But Autonomy was winning the battle for mindshare and thought leadership. Their stock was performing much better than ours, and this caught the attention of our Board and executive team. We spent countless hours analyzing and sometimes agonizing over it.
The truth is that Autonomy had a great narrative. Its "meaning-based computing" story suggested that instead of managing and organizing your digital content, you should just focus on how to find it—compelling, even if misguided. It sounded great: don’t worry about how you store, secure, and use your content. As long as you can find it, leave it wherever it is, no matter how it’s managed. This was the AI hype long before AI became a thing!
As a marketer, I still admire the message for its impact and consistency. Yeah, I'm still a little jealous and I've learned a few lessons from it. Autonomy’s “meaning-based computing” portfolio was cleverly packaged into three pillars: “Protect” (archiving, compliance, e-discovery), “Power” (enterprise search), and “Promote” (WCM and e-commerce). CEO Mike Lynch loved adding a scientific spin, often referencing the 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes. He even included Bayes’ theorem in the company’s 2010 annual report—without any explanation. It didn’t make much sense, but it sure sounded impressive, especially with Lynch’s loud, aggressive marketing style.
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| Autonomy's Meaning-Based Computing marchitecture |
And the investors were eating it up.
What really stung wasn’t so much the competition from Autonomy in deals but the stock price. During the Great Recession, when stocks of companies like EMC, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenText were struggling, Autonomy’s stock was soaring. At its peak, it traded at £30, which was 100 times its IPO price. Not bad for a company with products that were essentially a patched-together suite of acquired technologies, just like what EMC, IBM, and OpenText were offering at the time.
Fast forward to August 2011, when HP announced it was acquiring Autonomy at a staggering 80% premium over the previous day's stock price. The total deal came to a massive $11.7 billion, making it one of the biggest B2B software acquisitions at the time. Dr. Mike Lynch, often called the UK's Bill Gates, left the company less than a year later, pocketing around $800 million for himself. He then did what many do after a big payday: bought expensive toys, acquired a countryside manor, started a VC firm, and even received an OBE from the Queen.
This is where the fairytale ends.
The bad news started rolling in just before Mike Lynch was let go from HP, following a disappointing quarter. Then-CEO Meg Whitman (remember her?) didn’t hold back about her dissatisfaction with Autonomy’s performance under HP’s umbrella. By November 2012, HP dropped the bombshell that it was writing off $8.8 billion from the Autonomy acquisition, citing "serious accounting improprieties" and "outright misrepresentations."
What followed was pretty much expected: the SEC, FBI, and the UK Serious Fraud Office launched investigations, and lawsuits were soon filed. This kicked off a decade-long legal battle between HP, its shareholders, and Autonomy’s management, who consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, HP faced its own challenges, and with Meg Whitman out, it began selling off assets. By 2016, my by-then former employer OpenText had acquired Interwoven's assets from HP/Autonomy, and HP eventually sold the rest of Autonomy to the British company Trend Micro in 2017.
Speaking of fate, this is where the crazy, unbelievable stuff starts unfolding.
In 2018, former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain was indicted, tried, and convicted of accounting fraud in the US. On his way to jail, he provided evidence against his former boss, Mike Lynch. This led to Lynch being charged with fraud. Despite denying any wrongdoing, Lynch was found guilty in a UK civil court of artificially inflating Autonomy’s financial results during a trial brought by HP. Note the word “guilty”.
After a lengthy legal battle, Mike Lynch was eventually extradited to the U.S. in May 2023 and went to trial in March 2024 on 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy. His co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, former vice president of finance at Autonomy, was also on trial with Lynch. Despite being given less than a 1% chance of winning, Lynch pleaded "not guilty." In a surprising turn, the jury acquitted both Lynch and Chamberlain in June 2024, marking a victory for Lynch and his legal saga. While he was still facing civil lawsuits and many more legal bills, this was a major legal victory for Lynch and his team and they decided to celebrate by cruising the Mediterranean on Lynch's super yacht.
What happened next was some unbelievable coincidences.
On August 17, 2024, Stephen Chamberlain was tragically struck by a car in the UK and died. Just two days later, on August 19, 2024, the luxury yacht *Bayesian* was hit by a freak waterspout while anchored near Porticello in Sicily. The yacht sank in a few minutes, and six people lost their lives, including Mike Lynch, his lawyer Chris Morvillo, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International. Interestingly, Bloomer was the chair of the audit committee on Autonomy's board at the time of its sale to HP.
So, within two days, Autonomy’s CEO, his defense lawyer, the company’s VP of Finance, and the chair of Autonomy’s audit committee all died under unnatural circumstances. Coincidence? That’s hard to believe!
So, what exactly happened to Bayesian?
One possibility is that this was truly a freak accident caused by a rare weather phenomenon. The leading theory is that a waterspout—a type of tornado that forms over water—might have been responsible. But have you ever actually heard of a waterspout? They’re rare and typically not strong enough to pose a threat to large vessels. And a waterspout powerful enough to sink a yacht of that size, while other nearby yachts were untouched? Hard to believe. With no evidence left behind since it occurred on water, the only proof is a yacht at the bottom of the sea.
But Bayesian wasn’t just any yacht. At 184 feet (56 meters) long, it was one of the largest sailing sloops in the world—a sloop being a single-masted sailboat. Its 246-foot (75-meter) mast was the second tallest in the world, and the yacht was valued at around $40 million. This boat was said to be unsinkable, with multiple compartments and all the safety bells and whistles a billionaire would want. Of course, whenever someone says "unsinkable," everyone immediately thinks of the Titanic. Still, if I were a billionaire, I'd want a yacht like Bayesian.
I won’t dive into all the details, but there’s a lot of speculation out there. How could a yacht of this size sink so quickly? And why did six passengers perish while most of the crew was rescued? As a sailor, I’ve followed these discussions closely, and there seem to be more questions than answers—along with an unsettling number of coincidences. If you’re interested, one of the most succinct analyses of the accident is in this video (yeah, the speaker isn't very dynamic but he presents the facts without a bunch of fluff which is what all the media outlets do).
Maybe this was just a tragic, freak accident, but there seem to be way too many coincidences. Of course, there will be an official inquiry because, as far as I know, Italian law tends to find someone to blame when a person dies an unnatural death. So, we are already hearing talk of manslaughter charges, with everyone from the captain and the crew to the yacht builder, and even the weatherman, being accused. But most of that is just for show and for the insurance companies trying to limit the massive payout. Shocking, right?
Hopefully, we’ll eventually learn what really happened. Either way, the story of Mike Lynch and Autonomy is one for the ages, ending in a tragic twist.
Or is there perhaps another explanation for what happened?
