When Larry Ellison mentioned to a Wall Street Journal reporter that he was planning to give $150 million to either Harvard or Stanford, he caught the development offices of both schools off-guard.

The fundraisers at Stanford, who had been wooing Ellison—the C.E.O. of software giant Oracle and a two-time college drop-out—for months, said that they had no idea Harvard was after the same gift, money that would fund an institute to study technology and its effects on government, society and politics.

For its part, Harvard development officers were surprised to see the potential gift portrayed as a part of a direct competition.

And after an initial flurry of press reports following Ellison’s surprise disclosure, both institutions have agreed to cooperate to keep further negotiations with Ellison out of the press.

Ellison’s $150 million donation would rank as one of the largest donations to a U.S. university ever, although it is dwarfed by a $400 million gift to Stanford this year by the Hewlett Foundation. Harvard’s largest donation came from the Loeb family, who donated $70 million in 1995.

According to David M. Glen, Stanford’s associate vice-president for development, Stanford had been in conversations with Ellison about funding for an interdisciplinary program in technology and public policy for several months. But the talks were informal, and they had lapsed recently.

“We haven’t been in touch with [Ellison] for some time,” Glen said.

The next time Stanford’s development office heard of the Ellison gift was when reporters called for comment. “We were astounded when we got a call—we had no idea he was talking to Harvard,” Glen said.