A Silicon Valley venture capital firm, which said good-bye to information technology amid the dot-com crash several years ago, has started a new 300-million-dollar fund to be divided equally between the fields of clean technologies and life sciences.

Technology Partners, the venture capital firm that arguably jump-started the "clean-tech" boom, said the new fund is the eighth in its 24-year history, according to the San Jose Mercury News daily Wednesday.

Four investments from the fund were simultaneously announced, with two projects in clean tech and two in life sciences, reflecting the firm's balance of interests, said general partner Ira Ehrenpreis.

Technology Partners is a rare Silicon Valley venture firm that chose to abandon information technology. It opted in 2001 to emphasize clean tech, a term that encompasses alternative energy development, water-purification and anti-pollution technologies.

Today, the firm is regarded as a trailblazer in a global clean-tech field that doubled from 664 million dollars in 2005 to 1.3 billion dollars in 2006, according to a report by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.

Clean tech is still a relatively small portion of venture funding -- about 4 percent, according to the VentureOne report. The 150 million dollars earmarked by Technology Partners in its new fund amounts to more than 10 percent of all the money invested globally in the field in 2006.

On the clean-tech front, Technology Partners on Tuesday announced one investment in a solar company whose name was not revealed because it is still in stealth mode. It also announced a later-stage investment in Tesla Motors, maker of the high-performance electric roadster that has been clocked a zero-to-60 mph in four seconds.

While in life sciences, the venture capital firm specializes in neurosciences -- the treatments for the brain -- and in lifestyle" medicines including aesthetics and obesity treatments.