The Pulse
Meta Acquires Sundial and Adds Its AI Analytics Team
Meta has acquired Sundial, an AI analytics startup founded by former Meta employees Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan. Sundial’s team and technology will join Meta’s Data Analytics Tooling & Agents unit, and the startup will stop serving ext
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
“AI has created effectively unlimited demand for insights, and we want to define the future of AI analytics.”
Alex Schultz, Meta chief data officer
Meta has acquired Sundial, a startup that builds AI-powered data analytics tools for businesses, and plans to bring its technology and team into the company. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to Axios on October 23. The move brings Sundial’s co-founders, Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan, back to Meta.
The acquisition is set to fold Sundial into Meta’s Data Analytics Tooling & Agents unit, known as DATA. The startup will stop serving external customers when the deal closes, Axios reported. Meta is therefore absorbing both the product and the people who built it, rather than keeping Sundial as a separate business.
Meta folds Sundial into DATA
Schultz, who leads the unit, said in a LinkedIn post that Narayanan will lead Meta’s work on data analytics tooling and agents. Zhuo and other Sundial employees will also join Meta, bringing the startup’s AI analytics technology with them. Axios reports that several of those employees are Meta alumni.
Meta appointed Schultz its first chief data officer in July and gave him oversight of DATA. The unit handles descriptive analysis, including identifying questions the company has not yet asked, as well as experiments to test and improve its data and AI products. It also monitors critical AI systems and sends alerts, according to Axios.
Those responsibilities place Sundial’s tools inside a broader internal program: Meta wants analytics to help identify what to investigate, evaluate changes through experiments, and flag important shifts. Schultz described those activities as connected parts of the work Meta is building. The public announcement does not specify a purchase price or describe a timetable for integrating the technology.
Sundial turns questions into analysis
Sundial’s platform lets users ask questions in natural language and turns complex data into actionable insights through a chatbot plugin, Axios reported. Its pitch is that teams across a company can examine data directly instead of waiting for a centralized analytics group to answer each request. That setup targets a familiar bottleneck: business questions can arrive faster than a dedicated data team can handle them.
Meta is bringing that approach into an organization that already covers analysis, experimentation and monitoring. Sundial’s product is not described as a new Meta service for outside businesses. Instead, its tools and staff are being added to Meta’s own analytics work, with Narayanan taking a leadership role in the unit’s tooling and agent projects.
The deal changes Sundial’s customer access
The clearest consequence for Sundial’s existing business is the planned end of external service once the acquisition closes. The available announcement does not detail how that transition will work for customers or provide a closing date. Meta’s stated plan is to bring in the team and technology; its account of DATA’s remit indicates where those capabilities will be used inside the company.
That makes the acquisition a transfer of an operating analytics platform into Meta’s internal data organization, not an announced standalone product launch. Sundial’s external customers will lose access after closing, while its team and technology move into DATA.