Yelp and Hatch Advance Voice AI for Restaurants and Service Pros with OpenAI's GPT-Live-1
Yelp adds OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1 to Yelp Host and Hatch to make business call handling more natural, multilingual and operationally aware.
Yelp Host, powered by Yelp’s trusted data and now enhanced with GPT-Live-1, transforms restaurant call handling with the most natural voice AI experience available
Hatch’s purpose-built business intelligence, now with GPT-Live-1, brings a new generation of advanced voice AI to help service businesses book more jobs
By integrating GPT-Live-1 as the front-end voice layer—the technology that interacts directly with callers—within each product’s deep business data and purpose-built intelligence, Yelp Host and Hatch deliver more natural conversations with reliable call handling that understands business context and takes action. Callers can interrupt, change topics mid-sentence, or speak to people in the background, and the AI quickly adapts. The voice AIs can also detect the caller’s tone, such as excitement, frustration or impatience, and respond appropriately. By layering Yelp Host and Hatch’s language enhancements on top of GPT-Live-1, the voice AIs can also now automatically detect and respond to callers in nearly any language, so no customers are missed due to a language barrier.
Since launching in October 2025, Yelp Host has handled more than 1 million calls for restaurants. For service businesses, Hatch manages tens of millions of leads across voice, text, email, and web, representing billions of dollars of value attributed to its customers annually.
“We’re excited to be among the first to integrate GPT-Live-1 into Yelp Host and provide the leading AI voice solution for restaurants,” said Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, chief product officer at Yelp. “Powered by our reliable business data and frontier tech stack, Yelp Host’s value to restaurants is not only how it sounds, but how deeply it understands each restaurant’s operations. With GPT-Live-1, every call is more conversational and responsive. Yelp Host now gives restaurants an advanced voice AI that delivers exceptional guest experiences, captures revenue opportunities they may have otherwise missed, and helps staff focus on serving guests instead of answering the phone.”
“Hatch is among the first platforms to integrate OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1, and we’re thrilled to deliver a new, more natural real-time voice AI experience for service businesses,” said Chris Bache, co-founder and chief executive officer at Hatch. “Great voice AI requires more than a great voice model. We’ve dedicated years to building the intelligence that understands how service businesses operate, from technician availability and service areas to scheduling rules and emergency routing. GPT-Live-1 transforms how the conversation feels, and Hatch provides the operational intelligence that turns those conversations into booked jobs.”
“We’re bringing GPT-Live-1 to the API so developers can build more natural, powerful voice experiences by pairing it with their choice of models and tools,” said Teri Yu, multimodal product lead at OpenAI. “It’s exciting to see customers like Yelp and Hatch use these capabilities to solve everyday problems for local businesses—from handling reservation calls to scheduling repairs—and bring the benefits of AI to more people."
Yelp Host Delivers a More Capable Voice Experience for Restaurants
Yelp Host with GPT-Live-1 now provides the most advanced, natural-sounding voice experience available for restaurants. Yelp’s proprietary technology stack, trained on each restaurant's business and operational data—including business information on Yelp, reservation availability, food ordering, menu specials, seating areas, and more—differentiates Yelp Host and enables the solution to handle calls with skill and context so staff can focus on serving guests. In production testing at scale, initial results show an improvement in call-handling and a reduction in call transfers.
With the addition of GPT-Live-1, callers now experience a more natural conversational flow, improved turn-taking, and smoother handling of interruptions and background noise. This is reflected in more Yelp Host callers speaking in full, natural sentences during early testing, rather than short voice commands. GPT-Live-1 also delivers sharper post-call transcription accuracy, giving restaurant operators cleaner records of every conversation.
Hatch Elevates the Voice AI Experience for Service Businesses
Hatch's voice AI is built on the same operational logic service businesses already run on. Whether handling a customer service call or qualifying a lead, the agent diagnoses the issue quickly, verifies service area and job details, and uses real-time availability to book appointments. By bringing that operational intelligence together with GPT-Live-1, Hatch’s voice AI delivers more natural conversations that understand business context and result in more booked appointments, faster problem resolution, and higher customer satisfaction.
Hatch’s agents are designed to provide the level of service customers expect, from reaching out with annual service reminders to building new relationships with the tens of millions of leads businesses bring in from third-party sources.
Today's announcement reflects Yelp's broader efforts to deliver smarter, purpose-built AI tools that help local businesses grow and operate more efficiently. From Yelp Host handling reservations and food orders to Hatch powering lead conversion for service businesses, Yelp is building advanced voice AI solutions grounded in real business data that drive measurable results to help businesses succeed.
Additional Information and Assets
For more details about how GPT-Live-1 is enhancing Hatch’s voice AI product and Yelp Host, read the blog on Hatch here, view the Hatch product page here, and explore the Yelp Host product page here. Demos are available for download here. For further information about Yelp, visit the company's Fast Facts page.
About Yelp Inc.
Yelp Inc. (yelp.com) is a community-driven platform that connects people with great local businesses. Millions rely on Yelp to inform their spending decisions and get things done. By combining authentic human content with AI technologies, including Yelp Assistant, Yelp helps people move seamlessly from discovery to taking action, whether it’s requesting quotes from service pros, making reservations, ordering food, scheduling appointments, or connecting with the right businesses for their needs. Yelp was founded in
About Hatch
Hatch (usehatchapp.com), a Yelp company, is an AI-powered communications platform built for service businesses. By combining conversational AI with purpose-built operational intelligence, Hatch helps businesses turn customer demand into action across voice, text, email, and web. Its AI agent-powered CSRs engage leads, answer and qualify calls, nurture opportunities, and book appointments 24/7, all while integrating with the systems businesses rely on to run their operations. Hatch helps service businesses deliver exceptional customer experiences, convert more opportunities into booked jobs, and build lasting customer relationships. Hatch was founded in 2018 and joined Yelp in 2026.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, Yelp’s future product plans, including the ability of its investments and initiatives to drive profitable long-term growth and shareholder value, which are based on its current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties.
Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences also include, but are not limited to, those factors that could affect Yelp’s business, operating results, and stock price included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Yelp’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K or Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q at yelp-ir.com or the SEC’s website at sec.gov.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909348516/en/
Press Contact
Yelp Inc.
Julianne Rowe
press@yelp.com
Press Contact
Hatch
Amber Albrecht
press@usehatchapp.com
Source: Yelp Inc.