--- title: OpenAI is shutting down Sora | daily.dev description: OpenAI has shut down Sora — its AI video generation product including the app, API, and ChatGPT integration — just six months after launch. The product was... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-shutting-down-sora-55qkjbkbg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: OpenAI is shutting down Sora | daily.dev og:description: OpenAI has shut down Sora — its AI video generation product including the app, API, and ChatGPT integration — just six months after launch. The product was... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-shutting-down-sora-55qkjbkbg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/55QkjBkbg.png og:image:alt: OpenAI is shutting down Sora og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # OpenAI is shutting down Sora **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 3 min read · 3 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary OpenAI has shut down Sora — its AI video generation product including the app, API, and ChatGPT integration — just six months after launch. The product was reportedly costing ~$15M/day to run while generating only ~$2.14M in revenue, with downloads declining sharply. The shutdown also collapsed a reported $1B equity deal with Disney. The Sora team has been reassigned to robotics and world simulation research. OpenAI is consolidating around productivity and coding tools (desktop app, Codex, Atlas browser) as it prepares for IPO, cutting products that are expensive, legally risky, or lack enterprise revenue paths. This comes amid quadrupled net losses year-over-year, even as the company raised $110B in new investment at a $730B valuation. Competitors like Google Veo, Runway, and Pika Labs have reportedly surpassed Sora's capabilities. The shutdown reflects broader AI industry economics where companies routinely spend ~$2 for every $1 of revenue. ## Content OpenAI has shut down Sora — the app, the API, and video functionality inside ChatGPT — just six months after the standalone version launched. The Sora team posted a brief farewell, promising more details on timelines and how users can preserve their work. The official explanation from Sam Altman points to compute constraints and too many "side quests." The less diplomatic version: Sora was reportedly burning through roughly $15 million per day to run, downloads had fallen from 3.3 million to 1.1 million, and the app generated only about $2.14 million in revenue. There was no clear path to selling it to enterprise clients. The shutdown also collapsed a reported $1 billion equity deal with Disney, which had been contingent on Sora's continued existence. Disney apparently learned about the shutdown the same way everyone else did. ## What OpenAI is doing instead The Sora team has been reassigned to robotics and world simulation research — a pivot that reads better in an IPO prospectus than "AI video for consumers." OpenAI is simultaneously consolidating its desktop app, Codex, and its Atlas browser into a single super app focused on productivity and coding. A new foundational model codenamed Spud has reportedly completed pre-training and is expected to launch within weeks. The pattern is pretty clear: OpenAI is cutting anything that's expensive, legally risky, or hard to sell to Fortune 500 clients. AI video generation attracted deepfakes, celebrity knockoffs, and moderation headaches with no obvious enterprise revenue path. Robotics and coding tools are easier to pitch to institutional investors. ## The financial context Microsoft's financial disclosures show OpenAI's net losses quadrupled year-over-year. The company just announced $110 billion in new investment at a $730 billion pre-money valuation from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon — which makes the timing of shedding money-losing products fairly transparent. Meanwhile, competitors have moved ahead. Google's Veo, Runway, Pika Labs, and Chinese tools like Cling and Seed Dance are all considered stronger than Sora was at the time of its shutdown. ## The broader question Sora's collapse fits a pattern that's showing up across the AI industry. Anthropic has been throttling services during peak demand. Cursor, Replit, Perplexity, and Notion have all cut features or raised prices. The economics of generative AI — where companies routinely spend roughly $2 for every $1 of revenue — were always going to force some kind of reckoning. Whether Sora's shutdown is a sensible strategic pivot or an early sign of something more systemic is genuinely unclear. OpenAI is betting that consolidating around productivity tools and enterprise contracts gets it to profitability before the math catches up. That bet might be right. But the gap between the fundraising narrative and the actual unit economics is getting harder to ignore. ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@fabianletsch** · 0 upvotes > Thank god **@fabianletsch** · 0 upvotes > > What you made with Sora mattered > > > It really did improve peoples lives! > > > It made them quit social media because they couldn't stand the slop anymore. **@idoshamun** · 0 upvotes > Good! First signs of focusing --- Tags: [#ai-video-generation](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-video-generation), [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#sora](https://daily.dev/tags/sora) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-shutting-down-sora-55qkjbkbg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"OpenAI is shutting down Sora","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-shutting-down-sora-55qkjbkbg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-is-shutting-down-sora-55qkjbkbg"},"datePublished":"2026-03-24T23:46:14.172Z","dateModified":"2026-06-25T02:13:28.557Z","description":"OpenAI has shut down Sora — its AI video generation product including the app, API, and ChatGPT integration — just six months after launch. 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First signs of focusing","datePublished":"2026-03-25T11:04:22.313Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/55QkjBkbg#c-reEwp1dFq","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ido Shamun","url":"https://daily.dev/idoshamun","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s---xy_OAwk--/f_auto,q_auto/v1703781380/avatars/avatar_28849d86070e4c099c877ab6837c61f0"}}]} ```