{"id":297833,"date":"2026-01-22T15:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/297833\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T15:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:15:13","slug":"yelp-purchasing-ai-lead-management-platform-hatch-for-300m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/297833\/","title":{"rendered":"Yelp Purchasing AI Lead Management Platform Hatch for $300M"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yelp<\/a> is bolstering its AI capabilities by acquiring artificial intelligence-powered customer communication platform Hatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The online business directory announced<\/a> the deal Wednesday (Jan. 21), saying it would employ Hatch\u2019s lead management solutions to better assist service businesses as they adopt AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe acquisition of Hatch is an important step forward in Yelp\u2019s AI transformation, accelerating our strategy to bring powerful new AI tools to local businesses,\u201d Jeremy Stoppelman<\/a>, Yelp\u2019s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHatch is solving challenging lead management and communication pain points for services businesses<\/a>, and we\u2019ve been impressed by the innovative AI technology and traction they\u2019ve built. I believe that by bringing our companies together we will be able to help service providers operate and grow more efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n

The release added that the agreement \u2014 set to become final in early February \u2014 will see Yelp acquire Hatch for roughly $270 million in cash with another $30 million of employee retention paid out in two to three years.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2018, Hatch says its offering lets businesses increase retention and improve customer communication with the help of conversational AI agents for SMS, email and phone call interactions.<\/p>\n

Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n

Yelp has been embracing artificial intelligence tools for the last few years, adding new AI-powered search capabilities<\/a> in 2023 and AI-powered business summaries<\/a> in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an incredible moment for Hatch,\u201d said Chris Bache<\/a>, Hatch\u2019s co-founder and chief executive. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked day in and day out to build something that truly helps our customers grow their businesses. I\u2019m grateful to the Hatch team for all their work and dedication that brought us to this milestone. Joining Yelp means we can scale faster and help more businesses grow and succeed.<\/p>\n

The acquisition comes at a time when businesses are increasingly adopting agentic AI. As covered here Wednesday (Jan. 22), PYMNTS Intelligence research conducted last August showed that 52% of companies said they were just \u201cconsidering\u201d or \u201cexploring\u201d agentic AI. By November, that share had fallen to 30%<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, a big chunk of the enterprise market moved out of the window-shopping phase<\/a>,\u201d PYMNTS wrote. \u201cWhat replaced the passive interest is hands-on implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November, nearly a quarter of chief product officers<\/a> said that they were either piloting agentic AI or fully using it in production processes, compared to just 3% in August. Actual usage and piloting were evenly divided: 12% said they were testing agents out, and another 12% have already incorporated them into their daily operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe upshot is that in just three months, the number of enterprises using or testing agentic AI spiked sevenfold,\u201d PYMNTS wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yelp is bolstering its AI capabilities by acquiring artificial intelligence-powered customer communication platform Hatch. The online business directory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[7823,9668,291,289,290,18,147581,19,17,147582,5,1351,82,2350,81081],"class_list":{"0":"post-297833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-acquisitions","9":"tag-agentic-ai","10":"tag-ai","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-hatch","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-lead-management","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-pymnts-news","20":"tag-technology","21":"tag-whats-hot","22":"tag-yelp"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115939411541129956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}