Ex-Autonomy chief Lynch to set up London investment fund, report says

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch is planning an investment fund for young tech firms, Bloomberg has reported.

HP bought the British entrepreneur's enterprise information management firm in August for £7.1bn — as Lynch owned 8.2 percent of the shares in Autonomy, he personally made more than half a billion pounds out of the deal.

Lynch stayed in charge of the Autonomy division for around nine months, before HP dropped him in May due to "disappointing" licence revenues.

Now, according to the "people with knowledge of his plans" who informed Bloomberg's piece, Lynch is going to join the investment game in earnest. The article suggests that "the fund will be based in London and invest globally, with the aim of using the experience of Lynch and other executives to assist the companies in its portfolio".

While the most active British tech hub is arguably in London, around the so-called Silicon Roundabout, Autonomy itself came out of the 'Silicon Fen' hub around Cambridge, which also gave birth to the mobile processor design giant ARM and Bluetooth pioneers CSR. Indeed, Lynch's first 'angel investor' play since leaving HP came in June, when he participated in a £1.5m round for Cambridge's Featurespace.

According to sources quoted by The Telegraph, Lynch would also like to regain control of Aurasma, a virtual reality firm that HP got as part of the Autonomy deal. Like Autonomy and Featurespace, Aurasma is based in Cambridge.