BOSTON - Richard Egan, who rose from Boston street kid to the U.S. ambassador to Ireland after making millions of dollars founding data storage giant EMC Corp., died Friday after a battle with lung cancer.

His family issued a statement Friday night saying the longtime suburban Hopkinton resident died at his Boston home after being diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer in May. The family said he also suffered from emphysema, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Egan, who was in his 70s, was an electrical engineer and a former U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot who worked at Lockheed Martin, Honeywell and Intel before he co-founded data storage technology provider EMC in 1979. He sold most of his shares in the tech boom, shortly before the bubble burst.

The self-made billionaire was a key fundraiser for the Republican party and former President George W. Bush, becoming a Pioneer fundraiser for the president in 2000.

He stepped down as EMC chairman in January 2001, about three months before Bush nominated him to be the U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

Egan got a bachelor of arts in science degree from Northeastern University and a master of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He never forgot his hardscrabble routes and was a major donor to Northeastern University, where a research center is named in his honor.