Ventures West, a VC firm with a host of local investments, said Monday it has raised $158 million for its newest investment fund and some of the money is headed to Ottawa.

The company has offices in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver and has invested in a number of local firms over the past five or six years, such as Nuvo Network Management, DataBeacon, SiberCore, Spectrum Signal Processing and Intelligent Photonics Control.

The fund, Ventures West 8, will invest in early stage biotechnology, communications, energy technology and IT companies across Canada.

Ventures West VP Marc Wickham said the fund will be looking for new opportunities in Ottawa with a focus on first round investments.

Wickham added that he expects VC activity in Ottawa and across the continent to pick up heading into the New Year. However, he warned that the market is not likely to see the levels of activity experienced during the heady days of the tech boom in the late 1990s.

For the last three months of 2003, he forecasts $100 million will flow into the city.

If VC dollars do tally up to that amount in the fourth quarter, it will be a big boost for what has so far been a pathetic year for Ottawa's tech sector.

According to recent data from OCRI, there were only two VC deals in the third quarter, for a total of $36.03 million. The total for the first nine months of the year is $112.15 million. In the first nine months of last year, the tally was $457 million.

Investors in the Ventures West 8 fund include British Columbia Investment Management Corp., Business Development Bank of Canada, CPP Investment Board, EdgeStone Capital Partners, OMERS and Teachers' Merchant Bank, the private equity arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

Over the past 35 years, Ventures West's eight funds have raised a total of $600 million and invested in more than 125 companies.