Autonomy Corp. said Tuesday it was listing some $200 million of shares on Nasdaq to help boost the British software company's profile in the United States.

Autonomy said it would list 2.2 million shares from Wednesday at $124 per share, a thin discount to Monday's $127 mid-price close on the pan-European high-tech Easdaq in Brussels, its only home to date. Chief Executive Mike Lynch told that U.S. clients preferred to deal with companies listed there and found Easdaq ''a bit exotic.'' Some 880,000 shares are a new issue that will raise $109 million for the company, which uses pattern-matching algorithms drawing on information technology, probability theory and arcane maths to help computers ``understand'' unstructured human prose. Lynch said the money would be used partly to expand into southeast Asia and Latin America. The rest of the stock is being sold by existing shareholders including Lynch, Britain's first Internet-related billionaire who said he disposed of shares worth some $30 million but still owns about a fifth of the five-billion-dollar company. Autonomy, based in the university city of Cambridge which is surrounding itself with high-tech industry, has seen its share price rise by 160.8 percent so far this year, outperforming the Easdaq market by 121.2 percent. It has shared the bumpy ride for technology stocks, hitting a peak of $218 earlier this year before wallowing as low as $46.25.