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Yelp licenses reviews and business data to OpenAI for ChatGPT local answers

Yelp agreed to license its reviews, ratings, photos and business information to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT local answers. The deal is non-exclusive and financial terms were not disclosed.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2026 Yelp has agreed to license its reviews, ratings, photos and business information to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT local answers, Axios reported. Financial terms were not disclosed.1

Terms of the deal

The agreement covers Yelp's reviews, ratings, photos and business information, including 330 million cumulative user-generated reviews and more than 8 million business listings.1 The deal is non-exclusive, so Yelp can license the same content to other AI companies. Yelp's branding and links will appear when OpenAI uses the content, but OpenAI controls how that experience is designed. A Request a Quote integration is also planned.1

Background

Licensing to OpenAI gives it a route to appear inside ChatGPT answers about local businesses. Axios was the first to report the deal, and other outlets followed.1 Yelp did not state, in the coverage reviewed, whether the content may be used for model training or only for retrieval.

What it means for data sellers

Yelp's deal shows demand for local, review-based data in answer products. A seller in a similar position should specify whether the grant covers training, retrieval or both, negotiate attribution and links, and keep rights to license to others. Review and listing data that is structured and continuously updated is easier to price than raw text.

How the deal came together

  1. A large review corpus. Yelp holds about 330 million cumulative user reviews and more than 8 million business listings.
  2. Non-exclusive license. Yelp kept the right to license the same content to other AI companies.
  3. Branding and links retained. Yelp branding and links appear when OpenAI uses the content, though OpenAI designs the experience.
  4. Reported by Axios. Axios reported the agreement on July 23, 2026.

Takeaways for companies with data

  • Keep licenses non-exclusive so one deal does not cap the value of the data.
  • Ask for attribution and links back, since they protect your traffic.
  • Fresh, local, structured data can be licensed for answers, not only for training.

Sources

Every numbered reference above points to an entry here. Figures come from these pages as of the date shown at the top of the article. Where a source reports a number it got from unnamed people, the text says so.

  1. Yelp Licenses 330M Reviews to OpenAI for ChatGPT Answers (AI Weekly, July 2026)

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About the AI Data Deal Tracker

SellYourAIData tracks publicly reported sales and licenses of data to AI companies, with the price, terms and sources for each. Entries are checked against public reporting and updated as deals change. SellYourAIData was not involved in this deal. To ask what your company's data could sell for, get a free valuation. To report a deal, contact us.