Kling AI, Runway and Vidu gain users after OpenAI shuts down Sora video service

After OpenAI decided to shut down Sora, the generative video market did not stall. Users almost immediately began moving to other platforms. Kling AI, RunwayML and Vidu are growing fastest, and all three posted gains in user activity in the first week after OpenAI's announcement.

Who is winning the audience

The biggest short-term winner is Kling AI, from Kuaishou. According to app market analysts, the service's global weekly audience grew 4% to roughly 2.6 million users. In a market where habits do not change every day, that is a notable jump.

Even more important: before the Sora closure news, Kling already led in monthly audience, with about 7.8 million users in March versus 4.7 million for OpenAI's product.

RunwayML and Vidu are growing more modestly, but in this context even a gain of about 1% in a week is telling. Users are not just reading news about Sora's closure; they are actually testing fallback options and starting to move their working scenarios over. For the AI video segment, this is an important signal: the OpenAI brand no longer guarantees automatic leadership when there are services that are already available, easy to understand and not left in limbo.

Why the shift happened so fast

OpenAI announced the wind-down of Sora on March 24, 2026. The consumer version of the service was switched off on April 26, 2026, and the API is scheduled to close on September 24, 2026. For an ordinary user this is unwelcome news, but for studios, marketing teams and short-form creators the problem is practical: you cannot build a content pipeline around a tool that already has a shutdown date.

So the market reacted with migration, not debate. After an announcement like this, teams usually look past the name and focus on basics that affect daily work:

• stable access to video generation and editing;
• clear lifespans for the product and its API;
• the ability to plug the service quickly into an existing production workflow;
• predictable output quality for advertising, social and brand videos.

That is why even a small weekly move at RunwayML and Vidu matters more than it looks. It is not a random burst of curiosity but the first sign of demand being redistributed in a category where users have long compared models by real results, not by the loudness of announcements.

What is happening in the market

Sora's closure does not mean interest in AI video is cooling. If anything, the opposite: the niche remains attractive to both users and investors. Against this backdrop, Runway and China's Shengshu Technology, which develops Vidu, received additional funding in 2026 and continue to invest in product and infrastructure. That makes sense: demand from creators, directors, agencies and marketing teams has not gone anywhere, and OpenAI's vacated share makes the fight even tougher.

"We're saying goodbye to

Sora," is how OpenAI worded its announcement of the closure on X.

For competitors, this is a rare situation where the market frees up space not because the whole category failed technologically, but because one of its most visible players left. In such moments, the winner is not whoever promises a revolution loudest, but whoever turns interest into a stable product and user retention fastest.

What this means

The Sora story shows that the AI video market has matured enough: when one high-profile service exits, users do not wait months for the next miracle but redistribute right away among working alternatives. For business, the takeaway is simple: in generative video, reliability, speed of development and a clear product roadmap now matter more than brand strength alone.