Investing.com -- Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) shares surged 8% Thursday following an Axios report that the local search pioneer has struck a strategic content-licensing deal with OpenAI.

The partnership embeds Yelp’s massive database of reviews, ratings, photos, and business details directly into ChatGPT responses for local queries. Under the agreement, ChatGPT users will see official Yelp branding, back-links, and access to Yelp’s high-margin "Request a Quote" feature—allowing users to message local service providers without leaving the chatbot interface.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but the contract is non-exclusive, leaving Yelp free to strike similar licensing deals across the AI landscape.

CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told Axios that Yelp’s decades of human-generated review data give it a crucial edge in an AI landscape increasingly hungry for authentic, real-world context. Yelp already licenses its data to legacy tech partners like Apple Maps and Amazon’s Alexa.

As AI-generated noise floods the web, verified human reviews are becoming digital gold. For Yelp, the deal transforms ChatGPT from a potential threat into a massive new distribution engine—mirroring Reddit’s high-visibility monetization deal with OpenAI.