OpenAI has dropped Sora, its tool for turning text into video, less than six months after launching it as an app of its own. Sora was one of the clearest attempts to build a second consumer product beyond ChatGPT, the company’s chatbot. The plan was to turn its video technology into a business with its own audience, its own revenue and its own role inside the company. Its closure shows that attention and technical progress do not automatically become a lasting business.
A deal with Disney shows what was lost. Reuters reported that the planned agreement would have included a possible $1 billion investment from Disney and licensed more than 200 of its characters for short AI-generated videos. The deal never closed, and no money changed hands. For a product meant to open a path into entertainment and premium media, losing one of its few partnerships with real commercial weight was a serious blow.
Cost explains the shutdown, and OpenAI’s other moves at the time point to the same pressure. The company was shifting attention to coding tools, corporate customers, robotics research and a desktop super app. That app puts ChatGPT, the coding tool Codex and the company’s web browser in one place. Video is one of the most expensive things AI makes, because it demands far more computing power than a short text reply. The business case for it was also harder to prove.
The company’s wider finances show how fragile some of the boom’s commercial assumptions are. OpenAI reportedly generated $13 billion in revenue in 2025, yet it is targeting roughly $600 billion in total spending on computing power through 2030. Even before the longer-term expansion the company has described, its software revenue falls far short of the cost of building enough computing capacity. Under demands that large, Sora was one of the hardest businesses in the company’s mix to sustain.
Sora’s technology worked well enough to make it one of OpenAI’s most visible launches after ChatGPT. Once management had to decide where scarce resources would go, video lost out to products that bring in repeat spending and clearer revenue.
