OpenAI Abandons Sora: An Unsustainable Financial Sinkhole

OpenAI Shuts Down Sora After Six Months

Last week, OpenAI made the decision to close Sora, its AI video generation application, just six months after its launch. This decision immediately raised questions, particularly because the app had invited users to upload their own faces. However, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal reveals that the reason is much more pragmatic: Sora was a financial drain.

Prohibitive Costs for Limited Use

Launched with great fanfare, Sora initially attracted around one million users worldwide. However, this number quickly dropped to fewer than 500,000 active users. Despite this decline, the app continued to cost OpenAI about one million dollars per day. This high cost was not due to massive popularity, but rather to the very nature of AI video generation, which requires substantial resources, particularly in AI chips.

Competition and Strategic Reorientation

While an entire team within OpenAI worked to maintain Sora, Anthropic and its product Claude Code were gaining traction among engineers and revenue-generating companies. Faced with this growing competition, CEO Sam Altman decided to shut down Sora to free up resources and refocus, as the app was costing OpenAI the AI race.

A Failed Partnership with Disney

The closure of Sora also had repercussions for its partners. Disney, which had invested $1 billion in a partnership with OpenAI around Sora, learned of the app's shutdown less than an hour before the official announcement. This investment thus went up in smoke with the end of Sora.