Meta Acquires AI Analytics Startup Sundial from Ex-Meta Founders
TL;DR
- Meta has acquired AI data analytics startup Sundial, co-founded in 2021 by former Meta executives Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan.
- Sundial folds into a new Meta unit called DATA, led by Alex Schultz, named Meta's first chief data officer in July.
- Sundial had raised $23 million, including a $16 million Series A led by DJ Patil's GPV; customers included OpenAI.
Meta has acquired Sundial, an AI data analytics startup co-founded in 2021 by two former Meta executives, according to Axios.
The founders are coming back inside. Julie Zhuo, Meta's former vice president of product design, and Chandra Narayanan, previously analytics chief at Instagram and Sequoia Capital, are both joining with members of their team. Narayanan will lead Meta's data analytics tooling and agents work inside a newly formed unit nicknamed DATA, short for Data Analytics Tooling & Agents, reporting to Alex Schultz, whom Meta named its first-ever chief data officer in July.
"AI has created effectively unlimited demand for insights, and we want to define the future of AI analytics," Schultz wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the deal.
Sundial had raised $23 million before the sale, including a $16 million Series A in July 2025 led by DJ Patil of GPV. Its platform turned natural-language questions into analysis through a chatbot plugin, and its customer list included OpenAI. The product will stop serving external customers once the deal closes.
Originally reported by axios.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Meta Acquires AI Analytics Startup Sundial, Pulls Julie Zhuo and Chandra Narayanan Back In