San Francisco
– Yelp, a service that lets features user-generated reviews of local
restaurants, businesses and service providers, announced on Wednesday that it
has received an investment of up to $100 million from Elevation Partners.
Under
the terms, Elevation will purchase $25 million in shares, and seek to increase
its total investment to $100 million through a planned purchase of shares from
vested employees and other eligible shareholders.
Founded in 2004, San
Francisco-based Yelp counted 26 million unique visitors in December, and said
that users have written more than 9 million local reviews on its site.
In 2009,
the company launched in eight new U.S.
markets, as well as in the U.K.
and Ireland,
and also released mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and
Android.
The company plans to use the investment to expand in the U.S., Canada
and Western Europe, as well as to continue
development of mobile applications.
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