The boss of Nvidia is fighting to keep his job after he admitted to an affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy.
Investors have questioned whether Jensen Huang should continue to lead the $4.5tn (£3.4tn) semiconductor company after admitting to the affair with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman who allegedly passed information to Beijing.
Nvidia's board has launched an independent investigation into potential national security concerns raised by the tryst.
Shares in Nvidia sank more than 4pc in premarket trading, putting the chip-making giant on track to lose $207bn of value after AI fears wiped $433.8bn off the stock last week.
Dan Ives, an analyst and partner at Yorkville Ives, said: "The big question every Nvidia and tech investor is asking this morning: Will Jensen stay on as CEO of Nvidia?"
He said Nvidia's shares had declined on Monday because Mr Huang was "not replaceable" as the company's boss.
"There is no other person on the management team bench that can step in seamlessly ... Jensen has become the global face of the AI revolution for Nvidia," he wrote in note to clients.
Gary Black, a managing partner at The Future Fund, an Nvidia shareholder, said he expected Mr Huang to face pressure to resign.
Mr Black said Mr Huang's "code of conduct and judgment will be called into question", probably resulting in the board removing him from post.
He added: "I doubt Jensen Huang will be able to remain as Nvidia chief executive."
In a sign of the pressure on the Nvidia boss, other tech executives rallied to publicly defend him.
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a prominent Silicon Valley investment firm, said Mr Huang's affair was "bad for America" but argued against replacing him.
Mr Maguire wrote on X that Mr Huang was "irreplaceable for America's AI leadership" and added: "My guess is there was no bad intention."
Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, shared Mr Maguire's message, adding only: "I agree."
Bill Ackman, the Wall Street hedge fund manager, said: "Jensen Huang is human. And he is an incredible human. Even incredible humans make mistakes.
"He takes full responsibility as he should. We should all support him and his family."
He added: "I am not suggesting he gets a free pass. If indeed this is more than an affair, then it is obviously a real problem."
Mr Huang has in the past called for trade restrictions between China and the West to be eased. Luke de Pulford, the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said the revelations of his affair raised questions about this lobbying.
Mr de Pulford said: "He used his influence to oppose a tougher line on Beijing, for example, by harshly denouncing the 'China hawk' label as a 'badge of shame'.
"The fact he was doing so while having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy raises the prospect of elite capture, and must be investigated. Nvidia's advocacy must be treated as compromised pending investigation, and decisions taken to accommodate the company reviewed urgently."
In a message to staff on Sunday, Mr Huang said he was "deeply sorry", after confirming that he had been in a romantic relationship with Ms Huang.
Mr Huang said: "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
Nvidia previously denied claims of an inappropriate relationship between Mr Huang and the suspected Chinese spy.
US authorities have reportedly been investigating Ms Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based company Megaspeed, which buys AI semiconductor chips from Nvidia.
Megaspeed has been suspected of helping Beijing to gain access to advanced AI chips that are banned from being exported to China.
In a statement late last year, a Megaspeed spokesman denied wrongdoing.
He said: "We operate fully within the bounds of all applicable export control regulations and maintain the highest standards of legal and ethical conduct."
China has also denied that Ms Huang is a spy for Beijing, calling it "nothing but smears against China".
Mr Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 as a company designing and manufacturing specialist graphics-processing units, known as GPUs, for the gaming industry.
However, he made the decision to refocus the company on making AI chips in the early 2010s. The early bet helped Nvidia become a world leader in manufacturing the high-powered chips needed to power products such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.
Donald Trump imposed a ban on Nvidia selling its most advanced H200 chips to China last year. He said in December he would allow the company to sell them to "approved customers" in China.
