Omar Hamdi, founder and chief executive of Pathos Communications plc, argues AI will test whether PR firms can make money at scale rather than end public relations. He says Pathos uses software for lead generation, article drafts and business development, while people handle relationships and judgment. Pathos reported 14% revenue growth in the first half of 2026.
Omar Hamdi doesn’t see artificial intelligence as the death of public relations. He sees it as a harder question about whether PR firms can make money at scale.
Is PR spending falling as AI spreads?
City A.M. reported on 6 October that the share of UK firms spending on public relations and management consultants fell to 4.2% in September. Over the same period, overall business spending rose 3.1% year on year, and spending on AI services increased rapidly. The question, as Hamdi frames it, is not only whether companies will cut agency budgets as AI tools spread. It is whether agencies can use technology to deliver more useful work, more consistently, at a price and margin that make sense.
Hamdi is the founder and chief executive of Pathos Communications plc, which is listed in London. His answer is to build a PR company in which software takes on more of the preparation, targeting and business development. People would still handle the relationships and judgment that matter when a company is trying to be understood.
Pathos’s recent numbers give that argument a public company frame. Investegate published the company’s results for the six months ended 30 June 2026 on 9 September. They showed 14% revenue growth, 36% adjusted EBITDA growth and an 80% rise in customer cash receipts. Recurring customers accounted for 36% of revenue, up from 16% a year earlier.
Proactive Investors reported the same day that first-half adjusted EBITDA rose as higher revenue, improved operating leverage and lower bad debt charges fed through to profitability. Hamdi keeps returning to that operational point. He says the firm’s technology is helping with lead generation, lead nurturing and onboarding, while repeat customer relationships are becoming a larger part of the business.
How does Pathos use AI in PR work?
The change, as Hamdi describes it, starts before a prospect has spoken to anyone at Pathos. The technology analyzes news, suggests potential hooks and article ideas, and prepares materials for the conversation that follows. By the time a meeting happens, he says, the team can have article drafts, business cases and current news hooks ready.
In delivery, Pathos uses algorithmic matching between client stories and publishers to improve the chances that content succeeds, Hamdi says. He also points to the size of the market he is targeting. He cites a global market of 400 million small and medium-sized enterprises, not a small pool of blue-chip communications departments.
In his telling, the goal is to make a serious PR experience available to companies that may not have had the time, budget or confidence to hire a conventional agency. Prospects sometimes respond to outreach as if Pathos is already doing part of a publicist’s job. One reaction he recalls was: “I feel like you’re already my PR firm.”
Hamdi says clients felt they were getting the experience they would receive if a highly qualified PR professional with decades of experience had spent a day working with them. They were getting that experience “before they’d even met with us for the first time.”
He also argues the technology changes how the team works internally, not only how it reaches prospects. “It just makes their job much more efficient, much more lubricated, the velocity of the business has improved,” he says. The efficiency of Pathos’s business development, he adds, is higher than it has ever been.
Can AI help PR firms scale?
For business readers, the more interesting claim is not that AI can write faster. It is that a services company may be able to grow by becoming a technology company with a service layer. Hamdi says Pathos is adding larger and stronger publishers to its platform, which can support better margins. “We’re getting more efficient as we scale,” he says.
Yahoo Finance reported on 15 October that Hamdi discussed rising repeat revenue, the company’s aim of building a sustainable, profitable listed business, and the planned first-half 2027 launch of Pressella.
The broader bet has yet to be tested in the market. Pressella and PathosMind are moving toward wider availability, and the company will have to show that its tools deliver the results its results so far suggest. Hamdi’s view, though, is clear. PR’s future, he argues, belongs less to firms that sell hours and more to operators that can use technology to scale judgment, preparation and relevance without stripping out the human work that gives PR its value.
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