Choosing a public relations (PR) agency is less simple than it looks for a technology company, because the agencies are changing almost as fast as their clients. Over the past two years many have bought smaller firms, taken on new investors or changed leaders, and several now offer services that check how brands appear in answers produced by artificial intelligence (AI) tools, alongside traditional media work.
Some of the biggest shifts have come recently. Highwire has absorbed The Bliss Group, Hotwire has a new global chief executive, Walker Sands has a new private equity backer and Mission North has opened a practice for companies bringing AI into the physical world. For a business selling AI, security or enterprise software, changes like these can matter as much as an agency’s size.
The 12 agencies below are ranked on fit rather than scale. The order weighs named clients in relevant fields, recent changes of ownership or leadership, and how far each firm reaches beyond the United States. Staff and fee figures come from the agencies themselves or from published industry rankings.
1. The Hoffman Agency
The Hoffman Agency pushed further into Europe in March 2025 when it bought CCgroup, a London technology specialist. The deal merged the two London teams into a British business of about 50 people, with CCgroup’s Richard Fogg and Paul Nolan as co-managing directors, and added experience in mobile and telecoms, cybersecurity, fintech and analyst relations.
Lou Hoffman founded the agency in 1987 and still runs it from San Jose, California. It remains independent, which the agency says makes it one of the few such consultancies with global reach. At the time of the CCgroup deal it had about 300 staff across Asia, Europe and the United States, and its public client list includes Google Cloud, Meta, OpenAI, Nokia, Infineon and STMicroelectronics.
2. Mission North
In September, Mission North launched a Physical Industries practice for companies putting AI into machines, vehicles, factories and stores. It covers commerce, manufacturing, mobility, and aerospace and defence, and is led by executive vice-president Melinda Ball and vice-president Eric Stephens. Current and former clients in the area include humanoid robot maker Apptronik, Instacart, Simbe Robotics and Skyryse.
“AI is now reshaping how the physical world runs,” said co-chief executive Bill Bourdon. “It has moved off the screen and into the spaces, machines, and stores that define the global economy.”
The firm started life as the Bateman Group and took its current name in 2020, when founder Fred Bateman sold his majority stake to partners including Bourdon and Tyler Perry, who now share the chief executive role. Organised as a benefit corporation, it is based in New York and San Francisco, and in October it acquired cred, an agency that specialises in thought leadership and live events and keeps its own brand.
3. Highwire
Highwire acquired The Bliss Group in January, combining the two firms’ healthcare and life sciences work in a unit called Highwire Health. The combined firm has more than 250 people across North America and trades under the Highwire name, with Bliss chief executive Cortney Stapleton joining as chief strategy and business officer.
Based in San Francisco and founded in 2008, Highwire is best known for enterprise technology and cybersecurity, and the clients it lists include CrowdStrike, Splunk, Dropbox and Bitwarden. Michael O’Brien, who spent 23 years at Ketchum, became chief executive in May 2025, and investment firm Shamrock Capital has backed the agency since 2022.
4. Hotwire
Hotwire marked its 25th anniversary with a change at the top. Grant Toups, previously global chief digital and intelligence officer at Burson, took over as global chief executive in January.
The agency calls itself a communications consultancy built for the technology world, and it is owned by Enero Group, which is listed on the Australian stock exchange. When Toups’ appointment was announced, Hotwire said it had more than 400 people working in 11 countries.
Much of that size has come through deals made with its parent. Hotwire bought Eastwick Communications in San Francisco in 2016 and British business-to-business (B2B) marketing agency McDonald Butler Associates in 2021. In 2022 it added ROI·DNA, a B2B digital marketing firm in the United States, and GetIT, which handles B2B technology marketing across the Asia-Pacific region, giving it digital marketing alongside PR.
5. Walker Sands
Walker Sands changed hands in October 2025, when Mountaingate Capital, a Denver private equity firm, took over from Stone-Goff Partners as its investor. Founded in Chicago in 2001, the agency has about 165 full-time staff and is run by co-chief executives Andrew Cross and Dave Parro.
It works as a B2B marketing agency rather than a pure PR shop, offering PR and social media alongside creative work, paid digital advertising, search engine optimisation and the software systems that track sales and marketing. It bought Boston technology PR firm March Communications in 2021, and clients with case studies on its website include Sophos, Kaseya, Entrust and Sendbird.
6. Spark Communications
Spark Communications is the only agency on this list based solely in Britain. Lauren Richards founded it in London in 1999, and directors Kewal Varia and Ana Williams took full ownership through a management buyout in 2020, keeping it independent.
Spark describes itself as a B2B technology and life sciences agency. Brands shown on its website include security companies Panaseer and RSA, as well as Dynatrace, Cloudera, MuleSoft and Boomi. It has no offices outside the United Kingdom and relies on a network of international partners for campaigns elsewhere, so it is most relevant to companies whose sales are centred on Europe.
7. Edelman
Edelman is by far the largest firm on this list. Owned by the Edelman family and led by chief executive Richard Edelman, it reported $950M in fee income for 2025, down 3.6% on the year before, and its technology practice alone has more than 700 people in nearly 40 countries.
Its technology work has included campaigns for Samsung, Adobe, Netflix and PayPal, and its annual Trust Barometer, which it has run for more than 25 years, tracks public trust in institutions including business. In October 2025 it named Mainardo de Nardis global president and chief operating officer. That scale makes it a natural option for companies facing a reputational problem or launching in several markets at once.
8. PAN Communications
Philip Nardone founded PAN Communications in Boston in 1995 and is still its president and chief executive. The agency calls itself independent and has grown through acquisitions, most recently Indianapolis software marketing firm BLASTmedia in June 2024, a deal that took the combined team to about 210 people.
PAN works with B2B technology and healthcare companies, and alongside media work it offers content, demand generation and analyst relations, which manages a client’s standing with industry research firms. It has offices in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin, Indianapolis and London, and its published case studies include Algolia, Nuvei, Akeneo and Jobber.
9. Bospar
Bospar has run as a distributed, remote-first agency since Chris Boehlke and Curtis Sparrer launched it in 2015, naming it with a blend of their surnames. It now has 76 staff, and its net fees rose 19% to $13.28M in 2025.
Much of its work leans on data, with surveys and original research run for clients, and it offers services for startups coming out of stealth or announcing funding. In late September it introduced cheaper pricing, including a free tier, for Audit*E, its tool for checking how brands appear in AI-generated answers, aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. Its case studies include PayPal, Dolby, Logitech, Cisco and Snowflake, so its clients go well beyond early-stage companies.
10. SourceCode Communications
SourceCode Communications had just 34 full-time staff in 2025, yet its net fees rose 35% that year to almost $10M, which works out at roughly $293,000 per employee.
Greg Mondshein and Becky Honeyman, both former senior vice-presidents at Hotwire, founded it in New York in 2017. This year it won PRWeek’s Outstanding Technology Agency award in the United States, bought fintech and emerging technology specialist Rally Point PR in February and opened an office in Munich in July, adding to its bases in New York, London and San Francisco. Clients include 8x8, ThoughtSpot and Vultr.
11. Matter Communications
Matter Communications keeps its creative work under the same roof as its PR. In-house teams handle brand identity, websites, content design and video production.
Scott Signore founded the firm in 2003 and remains chief executive. It is now based in Boston, with offices in Newburyport, Providence, Rochester, Dallas and Denver, and it had 138 staff in 2025, a year in which its net fees fell 12.6% to $24.8M. Its clients span technology, cybersecurity, healthcare and consumer brands, with Blue Yonder, Lattice Semiconductor, Pluralsight and industrial software company HighByte among the technology names.
12. Ruder Finn
Ruder Finn has regional headquarters in London and Beijing as well as New York, and offices across Asia from Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore to Jakarta, Bangkok and Mumbai. In July 2025 it bought Era Communications, extending its reach in South-East Asia.
David Finn and Bill Ruder founded the agency in New York in 1948, and it remains independent under chief executive Kathy Bloomgarden. It had 1,350 staff in 2025 and net fees of $203M, up 7.2%. On the technology side, it acquired enterprise technology PR firm Touchdown in 2022 and San Jose’s Big Sky Communications in 2025, and Zebra Technologies named it agency of record for the Americas in April 2025.
Choosing Among The 12
The list covers very different kinds of agency. Hoffman, PAN, Bospar, Spark and Ruder Finn are independent, Highwire and Walker Sands have investment backers, Hotwire sits under a listed parent, and Edelman is a family-owned global network. Several have also grown through acquisitions in the past two years, which can change who ends up working on an account.
Size alone says little about fit. A security startup selling to European companies needs something different from a robotics company preparing an American launch or a chipmaker entering Japan, and these agencies meet those needs in different ways. Before signing, it is worth checking which of an agency’s named clients sit in the same field, who will run the account day to day and how the team has shifted since the last change of owner or leader.
