The Darktrace leading to government

British security firm Darktrace has been mired in controversy. Now its former CEO is a government minister. Rois Ni Thuama and Barry Collins investigate

- Rois Ni Thuama and Barry Collins

When the American software investment firm Thoma Bravo completed a whopping $5.3 billion takeover of Cambridge-based security firm Darktrace in October, it raised a few eyebrows.

Darktrace-co-founded by the entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died when his yacht sank in a storm off the coast of Sicily in August - was accused of financial irregularities, similar to those that dogged Lynch's Autonomy. Booking hardware sales as software and using resellers to inflate sales figures were only two of the allegations levelled at Darktrace (tinyurl.​com/ 363darktrace), all of which the company denied.

Then its CEO resigned in the middle of the takeover talks, only to become Keir Starmer's new investment minister a few weeks later.

Thoma Bravo will now take the company private, perhaps hoping to take Darktrace out of the spotlight.

But many questions hang over the security firm.

Out of Autonomy Darktrace was trumpeting the miraculous powers of artificial intelligence long before the current AI bubble.

Established in Cambridge in 2013, the company claimed to have "pioneered a proactive, Al-native approach to security" that "defends against unknown threats using AI that learns from your business in real-time".

The company was set up by Invoke Capital, a venture capital fund founded by Mike Lynch, using some of the proceeds from Autonomy's $11.7 billion sale to HewlettPackard two years earlier Lynch wasn't the only link between Autonomy and Darktrace. Many of Darktrace's senior management had previously worked for Autonomy (see box below), including the former CEO Poppy Gustafsson (now a government minister), chief technology officer Jack Stockdale, and chief strategy officer Nicole Eagan. In all, around 40 employees migrated from Autonomy to Darktrace, according to research conducted by investment fund ShadowFall (tinyurl.​com/363shadowfall).