Everhaze, the Dublin-based PR intelligence company, has raised €450k from three Irish family offices ahead of the commercial launch of Lú, its conversational agentic AI operating system for the PR industry, across the UK and Ireland.
The investment and launch comes as PR agencies and in-house teams face mounting pressure as demand surges within the industry for emerging GEO work despite talent bottlenecks in the industry and a steady shift in client demand from time-based retainers towards capability and outcome-led models.
According to the latest PRII Census 2025, 83% of PR professionals are working beyond their contracted hours by an average of nearly 10 extra hours a week while the CIPR State of the Profession Report in the UK reported that 60% of agencies reported skill shortages and 40% reported open vacancies.
Everhaze developed Lú to primarily tackle the economics of the industry. Users can message or speak to it directly by text, voice note or phone call inside WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack or Everhaze itself, and it completes tasks on their behalf.
Everhaze has identified 48 separate tasks Lú can carry out, including voice directed text editing, media list creation and management, media monitoring, live reporting, press release drafting, coverage books and campaign analysis.
Named after Lú, the mythical Celtic “Master of All Arts”, the product sits across Everhaze’s existing platform, bringing together real-time media monitoring, media contact management, press release distribution and narrative analysis into a conversational operating layer.
Speaking ahead of Lú’s commercial launch, James McCann, CEO and co-founder of Everhaze, said:
“Demand for PR is growing faster than capacity across agencies and in-house teams. The industry has been given more tools and more platforms, but too often that has created a need for more labour rather than compliment talent. Lú is designed to rebalance that: to make the work conversational, immediate and accessible, whether someone is at their desk, in a taxi or on a hands-free call between meetings. If you can send a voice note or take a call, you can build, execute and analyse a campaign.”
The funding is backed by Astogo Holdings, the family office of Jim Curley, who sold his stake in Jones Engineering in 2022 when the company sold for €1bn; the Kearns family office, former owners of the Institute of Education in Ireland; and hotelier Mark Cosgrave, owner of the Hendrick Hotel in Dublin and a member of the Cosgrave property-development family.
McCann added:
“This backing gives us the ability to bring Lú to market at the moment the industry needs it. Agencies are being asked to prove more value, respond faster and protect margins, while in-house teams are carrying more complex workloads. Our view is that AI should not simply add another platform to the stack. It should remove friction from the day-to-day work of communications.”
McCann is a former agency owner, having sold his previous firm, ClearStory International, to digital media agency Core Optimisation in 2025 for an undisclosed sum. The agency counted well-known clients in the international technology sector, including Techstars, HubSpot and Coindesk, as well as accelerator programmes in the UAE and Singapore.
Lú launches publicly across Ireland and the UK on 6 July 2026.