Meta Buys AI Analytics Startup Sundial, Founded by Two Ex-Meta Executives

Meta has acquired Sundial, an AI-powered data analytics startup founded by two of its own former executives, in a deal confirmed to Axios on October 23. Sundial was co-founded in 2021 by Julie Zhuo, Meta's former vice president of product design, and Chandra Narayanan, previously analytics chief at Instagram and Sequoia Capital. Its platform turns natural-language questions into analysis, letting teams get answers from their data without routing every query through a central data unit.
The startup had raised $23 million, including a $16 million Series A in July 2025 led by DJ Patil's GPV, with backing from Sequoia Capital. No price was disclosed for the acquisition. Sundial will fold into Meta's new Data Analytics Tooling & Agents unit, nicknamed DATA, led by Alex Schultz, whom Meta named its first chief data officer in July. Narayanan will lead Meta's analytics tooling and agents work inside the unit. 'AI has created effectively unlimited demand for insights, and we want to define the future of AI analytics,' Schultz wrote in announcing the deal.
The acquisition has one awkward wrinkle: Sundial's client list includes OpenAI, a direct Meta rival in AI, and the product will stop serving external customers once the deal closes, leaving those relationships in limbo.
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