OpenAI officially shuts down Sora — the video generation app was not profitable

In a single Tuesday, OpenAI made a series of decisions that completely changed its product strategy in video: it shut down the Sora app, cancelled plans for video generation within ChatGPT, ended a $1 billion deal with Disney, and announced attracting an additional $10 billion from investors. Sora debuted in December 2024 to applause from the press and users. The model was able to create realistic video clips from text descriptions and was positioned as the flagship of a new direction.

However, after several months of operation, it became a symbol of another problem facing OpenAI — a colossal gap between infrastructure spending and actual revenue. Video generation requires significantly more computing resources than text or even image processing. Each request to Sora cost the company many times more than a request to ChatGPT, and the company failed to monetize this volume of traffic at profitable rates.

According to The Verge sources, Sora consumed a huge amount of compute without corresponding financial returns — this became the main reason for the shutdown. The rejection of the Disney deal is a separate signal. The $1 billion partnership assumed the use of OpenAI's AI tools in content production by the world's largest media corporation.

To terminate such an agreement means either failing to handle the technical side or recognizing that the deal's terms were unfavorable under the current cost structure. On the same day, the company announced a new funding round: another $10 billion from investors brings the total volume of the latest round to $120 billion. This is the largest venture capital raise in the history of the technology industry — and at the same time an indirect acknowledgment that the path to profitability at OpenAI is still not paved.

Competitors in video — Runway, Kling, Vidu, Pika — continue operating and actively attracting users. OpenAI's exit from this segment frees up the niche and will likely accelerate consolidation around more specialized players. For OpenAI itself, this is a pivot toward focus: fewer experimental directions, more concentration on profitable products — primarily ChatGPT and APIs for corporate clients.

The closure of Sora is not a failure of the technology. It is an acknowledgment that even an impressive product does not survive if unit economics don't add up. Under pressure from investors and the need to prove business viability, OpenAI made a pragmatic choice: better to close a loss-making product now than continue subsidizing it at the expense of everything else.