Sora Was Reportedly Costing OpenAI $1 Million Per Day
A new report suggests a mixture of high compute costs, declining engagement, and shifting priorities led OpenAI to discontinue its Sora video app.
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OpenAI is Shutting Down Sora
Last week, it was revealed that the Sora video generation app from OpenAI is officially shutting down, and a new report from The Wall Street Journal points to a handful of specific factors that likely led up to the decision. Chief among them is the fact that it reportedly was costing OpenAI $1m million per day to operate the app.
According to OpenAI's Help page for Sora, both the web experience and app versions will be discontinued effective April 26, 2026, and the API will also be discontinued on September 24, 2026.
"If you want to keep your Sora content, we recommend exporting your data before the Sora app is discontinued. You can download individual images and videos from your Library before the Sora web and app experiences are discontinued. See below for more details on how to export your data.
We are still determining whether we can make Sora content available for export for a limited time after we discontinue the Sora web and app experiences as described above. If a final export window is offered, we’ll notify you by email before it begins. We recommend you export your Sora content before the discontinuation date."
- OpenAI Help documentation for Sora
In the latest exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, it's mentioned that active users had dropped from around one million to fewer than 500,000 by the time they announced the shutdown. Rising operation costs paired with declining user engagement paint a clear picture on why it wasn't feasible to operate, even with an infusion of funding from the likes of Disney.
According to the report, Disney found out about the shutdown just an hour before the announcement was made public. Since then, Disney has likely been in talks with several other AI companies.
According to Business Insider, OpenAI plans to pivot to robotics, focused on solving "real-world" problems.
"We've decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer app and API. As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks."
- An OpenAI Spokesperson
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