Strategic PR as an Imperative of Internationalization: Mechanisms of Legitimation and Capital Attraction for High-Tech Companies in the AI, IT, and Biotechnology Sectors

Citation: Liubov Krasnoslobodtseva, "Strategic PR as an Imperative of Internationalization: Mechanisms of Legitimation and Capital Attraction for High-Tech Companies in the AI, IT, and Biotechnology Sectors", Universal Library of Business and Economics, Volume 03, Issue 01.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The study focuses on how strategic PR is transformed from an auxiliary communication tool into a basic, constitutive function of the internationalization process of high-tech companies operating in the AI, IT, and biotechnology segments. Under conditions of intensifying hypercompetition for financial capital and a persistent deficit of public trust in complex, partly opaque technological solutions, classical marketing approaches lose their status as the key driver of growth. Their place is taken by PR, which begins to perform the role of the main mechanism for legitimizing technologies and business models in global markets and becomes the central channel for aligning expectations between technology companies and their stakeholders. The aim of the study is a comprehensive theoretical and applied analysis of three interrelated pillars of strategic PR: expert positioning of founders as carriers of unique knowledge and bearers of the company’s value orientations; integrated communications with investors (IR), which ensure the alignment of expectations regarding risk levels and return trajectories; managed construction and maintenance of international media narratives around companies and the technologies they develop. The methodological basis of the study relies on a qualitative research design and combines a systematic literature review using the Scopus and Web of Science databases with a comparative content analysis of case studies of three representative companies — UiPath, BioNTech, and Google DeepMind. The results of the study demonstrate that PR strategies are purposefully reorganized and adapted to address the specific tasks of internationalization. Expert positioning of the founder acts as an instrument for managing the ethical and epistemic risks of black-box technologies, when the level of transparency of algorithmic decisions is fundamentally limited. The material of the article is addressed to researchers of strategic communications, founders of high-tech startups, and venture investors for whom an analytical assessment of reputational assets and an understanding of their influence on investment decisions and the internationalization trajectories of companies are of fundamental importance.

Keywords: Strategic PR, High Technologies, Internationalization, AI, Biotechnology, Investor Relations, Expert Positioning, International Media, Reputation Management, Case Studies.

https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ulbec.2026.0301014