Nvidia's board met late this week to decide whether to remove chief executive Jensen Huang, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, capping a week in which the chipmaker lost roughly 600 billion US dollars of market value.

No decision was announced, and Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment. The meeting marked a sharp reversal from a statement days earlier, when the board expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

And the mechanism is simple. Under Nvidia's bylaws he can be removed with or without cause by a majority of directors, and the company has 11 directors, all but Huang considered independent, which means his own vote cannot save him.

The trigger was a report by the Wall Street Journal that the company was preparing to fire him, after which the shares fell more than 8 per cent in extended trading. Bloomberg later reported that the board had been working with an outside firm on possible replacements, and the board has hired outside counsel for an investigation into whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.

That investigation concerns a relationship with a businesswoman named Alice Huang, whom US officials believe to be a Chinese spy, according to reports. Separately, the New York Times reported that Huang had an affair with Kimberly Powell, a Nvidia vice president who reported to him. Reuters said it could not immediately verify that report, and Huang hung up on a reporter who asked about it.

But the market's problem is not the personal conduct so much as what it reveals about a company built around one man. Huang, 63, cofounded Nvidia and owns about 3.6 per cent of it, has dozens of direct reports and no named successor, and the shares have fallen about 8 per cent after hours on the assumption that he goes.

Armina Rosenberg of Minotaur Capital, which holds the stock, said the market was pricing Nvidia without its founder as the likely outcome rather than a tail risk, and that losing him would be a real blow. She named chief financial officer Colette Kress as the natural interim choice, while a prediction market put the favourite to succeed him as Ian Buck, who runs the data centre business.

The fallout is already spreading sideways. Nasdaq futures fell 1 per cent, Micron dropped nearly 2 per cent and CoreWeave 6 per cent in extended trading, while AMD and Broadcom each rose as investors weighed a weaker Nvidia against its rivals, and Samsung and SK Hynix moved in Asia.

So the immediate question is whether six of ten independent directors vote him out, but the larger one is why a four trillion dollar company reached its most dangerous week with no answer to the question of who runs it next.

• Nvidia's board met to decide whether to remove chief executive Jensen Huang

• No decision has been announced and Nvidia did not comment

• Shares fell more than 8 per cent after hours, with about 600 billion dollars of value lost

• The board is investigating whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort

• Huang has no named successor and owns about 3.6 per cent of the company

Source: Reuters