Yelp licenses reviews and ratings to OpenAI for ChatGPT recommendations

Yelp just handed OpenAI the keys to one of the internet’s largest troves of local business intelligence. The company announced a data licensing agreement that lets OpenAI tap into Yelp’s reviews, ratings, photos, and business data to power local recommendations inside ChatGPT. The deal, revealed during Yelp’s Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings release, gives OpenAI access to 330 million cumulative user-generated reviews and more than 8 million business listings. What the deal actually looks like Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman framed the partnership as a way to extend Yelp’s content into the AI-driven local discovery space. The financial specifics of the licensing agreement remain undisclosed. But the broader numbers tell an interesting story. Yelp posted record net revenue of $1.46 billion for 2025, and its “other revenue” category, which includes data licensing, grew 17% year-over-year. Worth noting: the relationship between these two companies isn’t brand new. Yelp has been using OpenAI’s models since at least April 2024 to power its own Yelp Assistant feature, a conversational AI tool for navigating local businesses. Stoppelman also indicated that further AI partnerships are in the work...