Several Irish technology entrepreneurs connected to chip design firm ParthusCeva plan to set up a €150 million European venture capital fund next year.

The fund, which is expected to be officially launched in January, will offer early stage and more mature technology firms access to private equity investment.

Parthus founders Mr Brian Long and Mr Peter McManamon have again teamed up with the company's former chairman, Dr Mike Pierce, for the new project.

The three technology entrepreneurs already operate a €27 million venture capital fund in the Republic, called Mentor Capital, which was established in June 2001.

They will be joined in the new venture by ParthusCeva's former chief financial officer, Ms Elaine Coughlan, who resigned from the chip design firm earlier this year.

Mr Mike Horgan, the current chief executive of Mentor Capital, will also join the new project.

Mr Brian Long, who remains a non-executive director of ParthusCeva, said Mentor would probably be backed into the new €150 million pan-European fund.

He said it was not clear whether the new venture capital fund would take the Mentor name or if it would be changed.

Mr Long said the new fund would include four senior partners with expertise in the semiconductor, software, banking and venture capital industries.

Two senior partners have been recruited and will invest in the funds but their names can not be released until the official launch, according to Mr Long.

The Irish founders of the fund recently travelled to Amsterdam to attend a pan-European venture capital meeting to try to attract funding for their project.

Mr Long said the company was in talks with a range of big institutional investors including the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Singapore Government and Hamilton Lane.

Enterprise Ireland has already invested several million euros in Mentor Capital's fund, which has invested in seven companies, including the Irish firms FireComms, Optical Metrology Innovations and OpenMind Networks.