Meta acquires Sundial, an AI data analytics startup founded by two former Meta executives

Meta has acquired Sundial, an AI-powered data analytics platform founded by two former Meta employees, a Meta spokesperson confirmed to Axios on Oct. 23. Terms were not disclosed.

Founders return to Meta

Sundial co-founders Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan will join Meta, according to Axios. Zhuo was previously Meta's vice president of product design. Narayanan led analytics at Sequoia Capital and Instagram and was director of analytics at Facebook. Other Sundial employees, including several Meta alumni, will also join.

Folded into Meta's data unit

Sundial will become part of Meta's new data analytics organization, according to a LinkedIn post by Alex Schultz, Meta's chief data officer, who leads the Data Analytics Tooling & Agents (DATA) unit. Schultz said Narayanan will lead Meta's data analytics tooling and agents work.

Meta named Schultz, its former marketing chief, as its first chief data officer in July. The DATA unit handles analysis and experimentation for Meta's data and AI products and monitors its critical AI systems, Axios reported.

What Sundial does

Sundial's platform turns natural-language questions and complex data into simple insights through a chatbot plugin, so teams can analyze data themselves instead of waiting on a central data group. The platform will stop serving external customers when the deal closes, Axios reported.