Meta has acquired Sundial, an AI-powered data analytics platform founded by former Meta employees. Meta chief data officer Alex Schultz said Sundial’s co-founders, Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan, and other team members will join the company. The financial terms were not disclosed in the reports reviewed. [1] [3]
Schultz said Narayanan will lead Meta’s data analytics tooling and agents work. Axios reports Sundial will be folded into Meta’s newly formed Data Analytics Tooling & Agents organization, or DATA, and will stop serving external customers once the deal closes. The Verge also reported the team’s move and Narayanan’s planned leadership role, citing Axios and Schultz’s post. [1] [2]
Natural-language data analysis
Axios describes Sundial’s product as a chatbot-style interface that lets users ask questions in natural language and receive data insights. The acquisition brings that technology and its team inside Meta; the available reports do not describe plans to continue selling Sundial as a standalone service. [1]
Schultz outlined three areas for Meta’s internal effort: descriptive analysis to surface questions and answers, experimentation in which AI could propose and run tests and interpret results, and alerting and monitoring to surface important signals. He described these as connected functions, but they are goals for the organization rather than verified results or a published delivery schedule. [3]
Axios identifies Zhuo as a former Meta vice president of product design and Narayanan as a former analytics leader at Sequoia Capital, Instagram and Facebook. Schultz also named Sundial team members John Maier, Stanley Watt and Asa Levi in his post. [1] [3]
The deal gives Meta additional talent and software for internal analytics, but the sources do not disclose purchase price, team size or an integration timeline. Those details will matter in judging how much of Sundial’s product becomes part of Meta’s own tooling. [1] [3]
Sources
[1] Axios: Meta acquires AI data platform Sundial [2] The Verge: Meta is acquiring an AI analytics company [3] Alex Schultz: Sundial joins Meta