Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is among the business leaders expressing an interest in the creation of a European Institute of Technology, according to allies of José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president.

Mr Barroso, who will set out plans for the new Europe-wide institute today , claims he has business support for the project, even if academics from some elite universities are hostile.

The creation of an EIT - a European rival to the Massachussetts Institute of Technology - is seen by Mr Barroso as a "flagship" project to show that Europe is serious about matching the US in high-level research and innovation.

Mr Barroso's colleagues say Bill Gates expressed an interest in the new institute when he met the Commission president at a Microsoft event in Lisbon at the end of last month .

The positive tone of the discussion between Mr Barroso and Mr Gates is instark contrast to official relations between the two men: the software group is currently locked in an anti-trust dispute with the Commission.

Microsoft is working hard to improve its image in Brussels, sponsoring numerous events and deploying senior staff to improve its profile.

The company said yesterday: "Microsoft supports the Commission's focus on university-based research to increase European competitiveness."

Commission sources say Nokia, the mobile phone company, and Pirelli, the tyre company, have also shown an interest in the new institute. "We also think that energy companies will also be supportive," said one.

Winning private sector financial support for the EIT is vital for Mr Barroso, and for allaying concerns in prestigious universities that the project will suck public money away from existing high-level research.

An earlier draft proposal for the project suggested a budget of up to €2bn ($2.4bn, £1.4bn) for 2010-13, some of which would come from public sources.

Mr Barroso's idea is to create a "virtual" EIT, with a small central core setting research priorities and handing out degrees. A number of satellite "knowledge communities" would be set up at existing universities, pulling together pan-European research teams to work on specific projects.

A draft of Mr Barroso's plan said one aim of the institute was to bridge "the cultural and intellectual gap between researchers and entrepreneurs".

However the idea has been criticised by Europe's top universities, who fear the EIT will draw funding away from a separate European Research Council, another EU initiative to promote high-level research.

Lord Patten, the former EU commissioner and chancellor of Oxford University said last week: "Europe already has one or two institutions which do as well as the MIT and many more of which would be able todo so if they were better funded."

He feared money would be diverted from those universities to the new institute.