Yelp agrees to buy AI receptionist startup Hatch for $300M

Yelp said on January 21 that it would pay $300M for Hatch, whose AI agents answer customer inquiries and book appointments for service businesses for a monthly fee. According to The Information, the price is about 12 times Hatch's annual recurring revenue, implying roughly $25M in ARR. Yelp, with a market value near $1.8B at the time, plans to run Hatch as a standalone business while also using it inside its own platform. The deal shows a local-services marketplace moving from sending leads to owning the conversation and the booking itself. Hatch's subscription model also gives Yelp recurring software revenue alongside its advertising business. For founders, the 12x ARR multiple is a useful public benchmark for an agent company with real recurring revenue in the small business segment. It also shows that strategic buyers with distribution to small businesses will pay for agents that already have paying customers rather than build their own.