UPDATE:  New CEO Shane Robison just came on SiliconANGLE.com TV theCUBE to clear the rumors – link to his statement with John Furrier and Dave Vellante.

It’s all going on over at Fusion-io this morning. The flash storage giant has been left reeling by the sudden departures of not just one, but BOTH of its co-founders.

CEO David Flynn, along with his pal Rick White, have simultaneously bailed out of the company, dashing for the exit as Shane Robison heads in the opposite direction to take over, just in time to try and head off a crisis that’s seen Fusion-io’s shares lose a quarter of their value overnight.

According to Bloomberg, the official reason for CEO Flynn and White’s departure was some vague kind of reference to them “pursuing new investing opportunities”, which is just the kind of statement we’d expect from a company with something to hide. So is there more to this than meets the eye?

If the investors’ actions are anything to go by, then the answer is an unequivocal yes.  Shares in in the company fell by 26 percent to $13.37 this morning in New York, following on from a 22 percent loss since the beginning of this year. Previously, Fusion-io’s shares were selling for $19 a piece when the company first floated back in June 2011.

The pair’s departure also appears to have dashed all prospects of the company being acquired. Andrew Nowinski, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos, told Bloomberg that there’s almost zero prospect of an acquisition now, despite rumors in the past that Dell or Hewlett-Packard might be interested in the firm:

“They’ve long been an acquisition target. But the stock clearly isn’t reflecting any sort of potential transaction.”

Is Fusion-io About To Fall Off A Cliff?

SiliconANGLE has been told by sources close to the matter that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes at Fusion-io than the company’s admitting publicly.

“Flynn and White were forced out by the board,” said our source, who chose to remain anonymous.

“They were founders with immense control and the board didn’t like that they had so much power. The board wants to bring more supervision and governance to the company. This is a shock to employees. No one saw this coming.”

Meanwhile a second source with inside knowledge of the matter told SiliconANGLE that the company could even be trying to cover up something more scandalous, saying that “the board’s action has the market believing that there have been financial irregularities and/or a major defection by a key customer.”

While there’s no evidence that Flynn or White have done anything illegal, the suggestion that the board has panicked certainly won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s been following Fusion-io’s performance of late. The company made a huge splash when it arrived on the scene back in 2008, achieving an almost rock-star status when it landed Facebook and Apple as its clients. But in the last few months things haven’t looked nearly as rosy. Last January it was hit by a one-two sucker punch when both Facebook and Apple announced that they were reducing their demands, forcing it to lower its revenue projection to just $440 million for the year, down from previous analysts’s projection of $530 million.

Fusion-io’s share price has eroded constantly since then, leading analysts to question what it can do to attract new, high-profile clients. That no-one has been able to come up with any answers suggests that its boardroom must be in an awfully tense place right now, giving credit to claims that Flynn and White may have been forced out.

The job of picking up the pieces now falls to Robison, who’s no doubt had a hectic first day at the office in his new role as CEO. His first task has been to try and quell rumors of discontent within the company, and to that end he’s been making just the kind of statements we’d expect:

“This is not about a problem with the company. The company is in good shape. It isn’t about any bad behavior on the part of the founders. There’s no disagreement on strategy,” he told Bloomberg.

We’ll be watching with interest to see if Fusion-io’s actions speak louder than its words.