Luke Sartain, boss of Bristol-based Narwhal Labs, has responded to criticism online about adverts for his AI platform

The boss of a Bristol AI start-up that secured more than £20m in funding from UK investors last week has spoken out after one of its adverts was slammed for being “sexist”, “tone deaf” and “deeply troubling”.

A billboard appeared at Bristol Airport on April 10 depicting a smiling computer-generated woman with the strapline: ‘She outworks everyone. And she’ll never ask for a raise’. Underneath it said: ‘Meet your new AI employee. Always on, never sick and no HR required’.

The advert by Bristol tech company Narwhal Labs is for a new type of AI agent that handles voice, SMS, email and Whatsapp messages. The communications platform – named DeepBlue OS and set to launch next month – is being built in Bristol and has received backing from a host of investors including Jonathan Swann, former director of CFC Underwriting.

According to Narwhal, it is designed to replace “fragmented, human-led response models” with “always-on” AI agents. The chatbot operates 24 hours a day and is able to handle enquiries, such as booking appointments, without the need for a human. It also runs on a utility model with no setup fees or long-term contracts, and pricing is based on usage.

The Bristol Airport advertising campaign also features a male counterpart, but the associated message is focused on efficiency, with the tagline: ‘He’ll find them, call them, and follow up. While you sleep’.

The advert featuring the female AI agent, which has now been removed according to Bristol Airport, has been described as “sexist” and “deeply troubling” by gender experts and garnered criticism on social media.

“We understand the strength of feeling our campaign has generated, and we recognise the frustration it has caused,” Luke Sartain, chief executive and founder of Narwhal Labs told Business Live.

“It was never our intention for the billboards to be perceived as misogynistic or racist, and we take that concern seriously.

“Our billboards depict people from a wide range of demographics. Different genders, backgrounds, and identities, and deliberately so. Because this was never about one group losing out to another. This is something far broader: humans versus machines. The impact will not be selective. It will not discriminate. And the debate it has sparked is exactly the one we need.

“While governments hesitate, the technology is accelerating. When as much as 80 per cent of white-collar work is at risk within the decade, silence is no longer a neutral position. The real question is not whether AI will replace jobs. It’s what we choose to do about it.”

But Dr Ruhi Khan, research officer in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Politics, told the Metro the advert was a “masterclass in encoded sexism”.

“When a tech company takes out a billboard in a major UK airport selling a female AI employee on the grounds that she will never demand fair pay, we have moved beyond unconscious bias in a dataset,” she told the newspaper. “This is the deliberate commercialisation of patriarchy. And this is deeply troubling.”

The advert also drew criticism on LinkedIn, with comments describing it as “misogynistic” and “ill-conceived”.

Mr Sartain, however, told Business Live the argument is more about “defining the role of humans in a world where we are no longer the most efficient option”.

“Can AI outwork a human? The answer is yes, and in more ways than most are ready to accept,” he said. “But outperforming someone is not the same as replacing them.”

Mr Sartain said he would like to see more regulation around AI in the workplace, including mandatory transparency, with consumers and employees having the right to know when they are interacting with AI, not a person.

He also believes businesses deploying AI at scale should be required to invest in reskilling and redeployment for affected workers. And that there should be a framework for coexistence in the workplace, with clear rules around where AI can replace humans – and where it can’t.

“In today’s world consumer expectations are rising, and AI is uniquely equipped to meet them, delivering speed, scale, and consistency that redefine what ‘good’ looks like. At Narwhal Labs, our mission is to help organisations meet those expectations responsibly,” he added.

A Bristol Airport spokesperson said: “The third-party company that arranges advertising at the airport removed the advert after concerns were raised regarding the content.”

A Norwegian green-steel start-up has emerged as the preferred bidder for the former Liberty Steel operations in South Yorkshire, raising hopes of a long-awaited rescue for two plants that have become emblematic of Britain’s troubled heavy industry.

Blastr, a business backed by the Oslo-based renewables investor Vanir Green Industries, has entered a five-week period of exclusive negotiations with the Government’s official receiver to acquire Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), the company that owns Britain’s largest operating electric arc furnace in Rotherham and the downstream works at Stocksbridge.

The deal, if completed, would draw a line under one of the most drawn-out corporate collapses in recent British manufacturing history. SSUK has been in the hands of the official receiver since last August, when London’s High Court stripped ownership from the embattled metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta and declared the business “hopelessly insolvent”.

A successful sale would also hand ministers a rare piece of good news on the steel file. The Department for Business and Trade is already wrestling with the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe, the Chinese-owned blast furnace operation taken into state control roughly a year ago and now widely tipped for full nationalisation. Whitehall officials had privately floated the idea of bolting SSUK on to British Steel to create a single, state-shepherded speciality and long products champion, but sources suggest that option has fallen away under Blastr’s plans.

Confirmation of the exclusivity window came on Wednesday. “The official receiver will look to complete the sale at the earliest opportunity,” the Government said in a terse statement, with officials pointing to the tight five-week runway as a sign that negotiations are already well advanced.

For Blastr, the prize is considerable, but so is the challenge. The company does not yet own or operate a single working steel plant. Its flagship project is a greenfield site in Finland, where it plans to use green hydrogen to produce low-carbon iron and steel — a technology that remains commercially unproven at scale. The business is led by Mark Bula, a steel industry veteran who has held senior roles at large producers in India and the United States, and who is understood to be the driving force behind the push into the UK.

Industry watchers expect Blastr to require substantial external financing to take the Rotherham and Stocksbridge sites across the line. Even so, insiders argue that SSUK itself is a fundamentally viable business, long throttled by the chronic shortage of working capital that plagued the wider Liberty Steel group under Mr Gupta and left the plants unable to buy raw materials consistently. Gupta, whose globe-spanning GFG Alliance has contracted sharply in recent years as cash pressures mounted, fought to retain SSUK to the last, but was eventually overruled in court.

The Rotherham electric arc furnace is a particularly strategic asset. As Britain’s largest operational EAF, it is central to any credible vision of a lower-carbon domestic steel sector and produces the kind of speciality and engineering steels used by the aerospace, defence and oil and gas industries — customers the Government is keen to keep sourcing at home.

The response from the shop floor was cautiously welcoming. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national secretary of the GMB union and a former steelworker herself, said Liberty Steel employees “have been at the sharp end of years of uncertainty at this point — this needs to be a deal that secures the long-term future of steelmaking in South Yorkshire”. She added that “any sale of SSUK must include due diligence which guarantees ongoing operations and stability of the sites”, a pointed reminder that unions will scrutinise Blastr’s funding package and operational plan closely before offering unqualified support.

For a region that has watched its steelmaking heritage erode over decades, and for a Government anxious to demonstrate that its industrial strategy can deliver more than just holding operations, the coming five weeks will be among the most consequential yet for the future of British speciality steel.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

Walt Disney is preparing to shed roughly 1,000 jobs in the first significant cost-cutting exercise under its new chief executive Josh D’Amaro, as the entertainment giant grapples with the shifting economics of Hollywood.

In an email to staff on Tuesday, seen by Reuters, D’Amaro told employees the company would be eliminating roles across several divisions, citing the need for a more nimble operation. “Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs,” he wrote.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the redundancies will land across the recently reorganised marketing group, the studio and television businesses, sports network ESPN, products and technology, and a handful of corporate functions. Affected staff began receiving notifications earlier this week.

The cull marks D’Amaro’s first major structural intervention since succeeding Bob Iger in the corner office, and signals that the new chief is wasting little time in putting his own stamp on the House of Mouse. It also places Disney firmly alongside its peers: Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Skydance have both taken the axe to headcount in recent months as the legacy Hollywood majors confront the same unforgiving combination of a softening linear television market, sluggish box office receipts and intensifying competition for viewers’ attention and wallets.

For Disney, it is the largest round of cuts since 2023, when the group announced some 7,000 redundancies as part of a sweeping $5.5bn (£4.2bn) cost-saving drive. That earlier exercise was launched under pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz, who had been agitating for sharper financial discipline and a credible route to profitability for the group’s loss-making streaming arm.

With a global workforce of around 231,000 at the close of its last fiscal year in September, the latest reduction is proportionately modest, affecting well under half of one per cent of total headcount. But the symbolism is hard to miss. By targeting marketing, studio, television and ESPN in a single sweep, D’Amaro is effectively telling Wall Street that no corner of the empire is beyond scrutiny as management hunts for leaner operating structures and faster decision-making.

The job losses were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.

NEW YORK — Alphabet Inc. Class C shares edged lower in early trading Wednesday, dipping 0.47 percent to $329.01 as investors paused ahead of the company’s first-quarter earnings later this month while weighing heavy artificial intelligence investments against broader market optimism over potential de-escalation in the Middle East.

At 9:41 a.m. EDT, GOOG had fallen $1.57 from Tuesday’s close. The modest decline contrasted with gains in the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rose on hopes that President Donald Trump’s comments signaling the Iran conflict is “very close to over” could ease energy price pressures and support global advertising spending.

Alphabet, parent of Google, has been navigating a complex environment. Strong momentum in Google Cloud and Gemini AI advancements have driven optimism, yet concerns over soaring capital expenditures — projected between $175 billion and $185 billion for 2026 — continue to pressure near-term margins and free cash flow.

Earnings Preview

Alphabet is scheduled to report first-quarter 2026 results after the market close on April 29. Analysts expect revenue around $106-107 billion and earnings per share near $2.60, building on the robust Q4 2025 performance that saw revenue hit $113.8 billion and EPS reach $2.82.

Google Cloud remains a standout, with recent quarters showing accelerating growth fueled by AI infrastructure demand from hyperscalers. The segment’s backlog has swelled, reflecting strong enterprise adoption of Gemini-powered tools. However, the massive AI-related buildout has raised questions about profitability timelines.

Search advertising, still the company’s core engine, benefits from AI Overviews and Gemini integration, though shifts in user behavior and competition from OpenAI and others create ongoing dynamics. YouTube advertising and subscription services also provide diversified revenue streams.

AI Leadership and Gemini Momentum

Alphabet has aggressively pushed Gemini models throughout 2026. Recent updates have expanded capabilities, with user growth reaching hundreds of millions and deeper integration across Google products. The company’s heavy CapEx reflects ambitions to maintain leadership in the generative AI race, including data centers, custom chips and model training.

While some investors worry about the short-term financial burden, others see it as necessary spending to capture long-term market share. Google Cloud’s growth rate is expected to be a key focus on the upcoming earnings call, with analysts viewing it as the primary driver for potential stock upside.

Market and Geopolitical Context

Wednesday’s trading comes as markets broadly advance on Middle East developments. Reduced fears over prolonged disruption to oil supplies from the Strait of Hormuz have lifted risk assets, benefiting advertising-dependent companies like Alphabet. Digital ad spending tends to correlate with economic confidence and corporate budgets.

Alphabet shares have shown resilience in 2026 despite volatility tied to AI spending concerns and earlier geopolitical shocks. The stock has traded in a range, pulling back from highs earlier in the year amid broader tech sector rotation but remaining well above longer-term averages.

Regulatory and Antitrust Backdrop

Ongoing U.S. Department of Justice actions and potential appeals continue to loom over the company. Any resolution or clarity on remedies could influence investor sentiment, though the immediate focus remains on operational execution and AI progress.

Internationally, Alphabet navigates varying regulatory environments, from European privacy rules to competition probes in multiple jurisdictions. These factors add layers of uncertainty but have not derailed core business growth.

Analyst Perspectives

Wall Street remains generally bullish on Alphabet’s long-term prospects. Several firms highlight the company’s undervaluation relative to growth potential in cloud and AI, with price targets often exceeding current levels. However, execution on cost management and returns on AI investments will be closely scrutinized.

Some analysts recommend buying ahead of earnings, citing strong fundamentals and the possibility of positive surprises in cloud metrics. Others advise caution given high expectations and the risk of margin compression from elevated spending.

Broader Tech Sector Outlook

Alphabet’s performance mirrors trends across big tech. Peers face similar pressures balancing innovation spending with profitability. Yet demand for AI infrastructure remains robust, supporting valuations even as near-term costs mount.

Retail and institutional investors continue monitoring Alphabet as a core holding for exposure to digital advertising, cloud computing and artificial intelligence — three secular growth areas expected to shape the economy for years.

Looking Ahead

As the April 29 earnings approach, investors will seek details on cloud growth trajectory, Gemini adoption metrics, advertising trends and updated guidance on capital expenditures. Management’s tone on balancing growth and efficiency could sway sentiment significantly.

In the meantime, external factors like Middle East developments, Federal Reserve signals and overall market risk appetite will influence trading. Wednesday’s slight pullback appears more like profit-taking or positioning than a fundamental shift.

Alphabet’s massive scale, financial strength and technological moat position it well for continued leadership. Whether the current AI investment cycle delivers outsized returns remains the central debate, but the company’s track record of innovation suggests it is well-equipped to navigate the challenges.

For now, the modest decline in GOOG shares reflects a cautious pause in an otherwise optimistic market environment. As global tensions ease and earnings season intensifies, Alphabet stands ready to demonstrate why it remains one of the most important technology franchises in the world.

NEW YORK — IonQ Inc. shares have delivered explosive gains for early believers but remain a high-stakes bet heading deeper into 2026, with Wall Street analysts largely urging investors to buy the dip while cautioning that the quantum computing pioneer’s path to profitability is long and volatile.

Trading around $35–$40 in mid-April 2026, IONQ stock has pulled back from earlier highs amid broader tech sector rotation and lingering concerns over execution risks. Yet the company’s fundamentals tell a compelling growth story: 202% revenue increase in 2025 to $130 million, a robust $370 million backlog, and ambitious 2026 guidance of $225 million to $245 million in revenue.

Analysts maintain a consensus “Moderate Buy” to “Strong Buy” rating. The average 12-month price target sits near $65–$69, implying roughly 80–100 percent upside from current levels, with some optimistic forecasts reaching $100. No major brokerage currently carries a Sell rating.

Strong Commercial Momentum

IonQ has transitioned from pure research to a full-stack quantum platform provider faster than many competitors. Its trapped-ion technology has achieved industry-leading fidelity metrics, including 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity on systems like Tempo. The company recently hit key milestones such as photonic interconnect breakthroughs and expanded collaborations with institutions including the University of Maryland and DARPA.

Enterprise and government adoption is accelerating. Major customers across finance, pharmaceuticals, logistics and defense are using IonQ systems for complex optimization, simulation and machine learning tasks that classical computers struggle with. The $370 million remaining performance obligations provide strong revenue visibility into 2026 and beyond.

CEO Niccolo de Masi described 2025 as an “inflection point,” with the company scaling production, improving manufacturing yields and positioning itself as the only full-stack quantum player with vertically integrated hardware, software and cloud access.

Financial Position and Path Forward

IonQ ended 2025 with a fortress-like balance sheet — roughly $3.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments and no debt. This war chest funds aggressive R&D and potential acquisitions while shielding the company from near-term dilution pressures that have plagued smaller quantum peers.

Still, the company remains deeply unprofitable. Gross margins are negative as it invests heavily in scaling systems and cloud infrastructure. Analysts expect continued cash burn in 2026, though improving commercial mix and higher utilization rates should gradually narrow losses. Earnings growth estimates for 2026 sit around 65 percent on top of triple-digit revenue expansion.

Risks That Could Derail the Bull Case

Quantum computing is still an emerging field with significant technical and commercial hurdles. Error correction, scalability to thousands of logical qubits, and real-world advantage over classical systems remain years away for most applications. IonQ faces stiff competition from IBM, Google, Rigetti, Quantinuum and others pursuing different technological approaches.

Valuation remains stretched. Even after the recent pullback, shares trade at enormous multiples of current sales. Any delay in hitting 2026 guidance, slower customer ramp or negative clinical trial outcomes for quantum use cases could trigger sharp sell-offs. The stock’s beta above 2.7 underscores its volatility.

Broader market sentiment toward high-growth tech also matters. Geopolitical tensions, interest rate shifts or another AI-related rotation could pressure speculative names like IonQ.

Why Many Analysts Still Say Buy

Supporters argue IonQ is uniquely positioned. Its technology has demonstrated superior performance on key benchmarks, and the company is shipping systems and cloud access today while competitors remain further from commercialization. Government contracts, including recent DARPA awards, provide stable revenue and validation.

Longer-term forecasts are even more bullish. Some models see IonQ capturing a meaningful slice of a quantum market projected to reach tens of billions by the early 2030s. For patient investors with high risk tolerance, the current valuation may represent an entry point before the next leg of commercial scaling.

Recent sector catalysts — including Nvidia’s quantum-related AI announcements — have lifted the entire quantum basket, with IonQ often leading gains on positive news flow.

Investment Considerations for 2026

For growth-oriented portfolios, IonQ offers asymmetric upside if it executes on its roadmap and quantum advantage materializes in the coming years. Position sizing should remain modest given volatility and binary outcomes typical of frontier technology.

Conservative investors or those seeking near-term profitability may prefer to wait for clearer signals of sustained positive gross margins and consistent earnings beats. Dollar-cost averaging on dips could mitigate timing risk for believers in the long-term thesis.

Bottom Line

IonQ enters the heart of 2026 as a leader in a transformative but immature industry. Strong revenue momentum, technical progress and a rock-solid balance sheet support the bullish analyst consensus. Yet sky-high expectations, ongoing losses and execution challenges mean the stock will likely remain a roller-coaster ride.

Investors considering IonQ must weigh its enormous potential against substantial risks. For those with long time horizons and conviction in quantum’s future, the data leans toward buying on weakness. For others, it may be prudent to monitor from the sidelines until more commercial proof points emerge.

As quantum computing inches closer to practical utility, IonQ’s ability to convert its technology leadership into durable profits will ultimately decide whether today’s buyers become tomorrow’s winners.