OpenAI shuts down video generator Sora and jeopardizes a billion-dollar deal with Disney

OpenAI announced the closure of Sora — a video generator that creates videos from text descriptions, which the company launched in late 2024 as one of its key products. Sam Altman personally informed employees that the TikTok-like Sora app and API access for developers will be shut down. The rumored integration of the technology into ChatGPT will not happen.

When OpenAI first introduced Sora, the industry reaction was nearly unanimous: this is a breakthrough. Horses galloped across snow-covered mountains, fantastic cities receded into the horizon, cinematic scenes emerged from a line of text in seconds. The company was clearly positioning itself for leadership in the AI-video segment, a market analysts valued at tens of billions of dollars in coming years.

The launch of a consumer app in late 2024 looked like a logical step toward monetizing this technology. In December 2024, Disney announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI. The world's largest media conglomerate promised to invest $1 billion in the company and gained the right to license Disney characters for products based on Sora.

For the industry, this was a signal: conservative Hollywood was taking AI video seriously. The collaboration with Disney gave Sora weight and legitimacy that none of its competitors had. Now that Sora is shutting down, this partnership is at risk: according to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is contingent on the product's existence.

OpenAI's decision looks especially strange against the backdrop of intensifying competition. Google is actively developing Veo 2, offering it to corporate clients through Workspace. Runway regularly releases updates and builds partnerships with studios.

Chinese Kling from Kuaishou is gaining popularity in Western markets — and attracting users who were put off by Sora's pricing. Steady growth in the segment means: OpenAI's exit is not the end of the market, but a gift to competitors who are willing to continue investing. A company that had all the resources to win this race is voluntarily withdrawing from it.

Sora's problem lay in the gap between presentation and reality. Demo videos were impressive, but real users regularly reported artifacts, poor control over character movement, unpredictable scenes, and limited editing capabilities. API access for developers attracted a narrow audience — the product turned out to be more expensive and less flexible than alternatives.

Sufficient commercial success to justify the scale was not achieved. The closure of Sora fits into a broader trend: AI companies quickly launch consumer products and then pivot or shut them down just as quickly when monetization fails to meet expectations. The difference is that Sora managed to attract major corporate partnerships.

Now they will be left in limbo, and partners will face the need to renegotiate agreements with a company that has changed course. The closure raises questions that OpenAI has yet to answer. What will happen to the Sora development team — one of the industry's strongest video-AI divisions?

Will the technology survive in another format — for example, as a built-in feature of ChatGPT Plus for corporate clients? How irreversible is the rift with Disney, which invested a symbolic billion in a product that no longer exists? The answers will determine whether the closure is a tactical pivot or an acknowledgment of a failed direction entirely.

For the industry, this episode is an important lesson. Even the world's most capitalized AI startup is capable of shutting down a product if it fails to find a sustainable business model. The Disney deal exposes the risks of a strategy in which corporate partnerships are built around a specific tool rather than a platform.

OpenAI, based on signals, is concentrating on ChatGPT and enterprise solutions. Video generation, at least in its current form, did not fit into this plan.