OpenAI Shuts Down Sora Six Months After Its Viral Launch
OpenAI has confirmed it is closing Sora, the AI-powered short-form video app that went viral after its September launch, as the company pulls back on costly consumer products ahead of a potential IPO. The shutdown, announced on X on March 24, ends one of the more talked-about AI consumer experiments of the past year and takes down the Disney deal that accompanied it.
What Sora Was and How Quickly It Fell
Sora launched in September 2025 as an AI-first social video platform built around a TikTok-style vertical feed. Users could generate videos from text prompts, scan their faces to insert themselves as characters in videos, remix content from other users, and post to a shared community feed. The app hit one million downloads in under five days and topped Apple's App Store charts within 24 hours of launch.
The initial momentum did not last. Downloads peaked at roughly 3.3 million in November 2025 then dropped to about 1.1 million by February 2026. Over its entire lifetime, the app generated approximately $2.1 million from in-app purchases, a figure that fell far short of what was needed to justify the GPU costs required to run video generation at scale.
Related reading: Microsoft Weighs Legal Action Over OpenAI-AWS Deal
Why OpenAI Is Pulling the Plug
Video generation is computationally expensive. Each video consumed significant GPU resources that could otherwise support more profitable services. OpenAI is currently valued at $730 billion and is preparing for a potential IPO later this year, which has pushed leadership to cut costs and concentrate resources on products with clearer revenue potential.
Sora also carried legal and reputational risks that made it a liability ahead of a public offering. The app's face-scanning feature, originally called “Cameos” until OpenAI was forced to rename it after a lawsuit, generated deepfakes of public figures and unauthorized videos using copyrighted characters. Deepfake experts raised concerns throughout the app's lifespan, and moderation proved difficult to enforce at scale.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, made the new direction clear at a recent all-hands meeting, telling staff the company is “orienting aggressively” toward high-productivity use cases and away from what she described as “side quests.” One area she identified as a priority is enterprise, where Anthropic has built significant traction with its Claude model.
The Disney Deal That Never Closed
The Sora shutdown brings down a high-profile partnership that had been announced just three months earlier. In December 2025, Disney announced it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI and allow Sora users to generate videos featuring more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. The deal included plans for Disney+ to feature curated selections of Sora-generated content. The transaction never closed.
Disney confirmed the partnership is finished. “We respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” a Disney spokesperson said. “We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are.”
What Comes Next for Users
OpenAI has not yet provided a specific shutdown date for the app, the API, or the Sora.com website. The company said it will share timelines and details on how users can preserve and export their work. The underlying video generation model may remain accessible through ChatGPT for a limited period, though OpenAI confirmed ChatGPT will also stop generating video from text prompts as part of the shutdown.
The Sora closure is the second major product reversal OpenAI announced on the same day. The company also confirmed it was stepping back from its Instant Checkout shopping feature, pivoting ChatGPT toward product discovery rather than direct transactions. Both decisions point in the same direction: OpenAI is shedding consumer experiments that do not generate predictable revenue and consolidating around enterprise AI, coding tools, and agentic products where it sees a clearer path to profitability.
