OpenAI plans to discontinue its popular-for-a-hot-second Sora video app, as the company says it's looking to narrow its focus and its human and computer resources.
Why it matters: OpenAI is prioritizing capital, chips and enterprise products over experimental bets as it faces increased competition from Anthropic and Google.
The big picture: Sora was consuming significant compute.
- All the frontier AI companies are dealing with a shortage of processing power for both their research and commercial efforts.
- The iOS app, API and Sora.com experience will all be shut down, though an exact timeline has yet to be announced.
What they're saying: Sora's research team will continue "to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks," an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to Axios.
- The company said it will share details soon on when the app and API will disappear and how people can preserve the AI videos they made.
Between the lines: The move is a stark reversal for Sora.
- The original Sora model debuted in early 2024 and then the company created a separate app in September 2025 that allowed people to insert themselves into the short videos.
- "With Sora 2, we are jumping straight to what we think may be the GPT-3.5 moment for video," the company said at the time.
- OpenAI envisioned using AI video to kickstart an AI-era social network around sharing creations. The app rose to the top of the charts on Apple's App Store and reached a million downloads faster than ChatGPT .
- By January downloads had plunged 45%, per TechCrunch.
Zoom in: Sora also led to intense conversations with content creators and, eventually, to the announcement of a landmark deal with Disney licensing more than 200 of its characters for use in AI video and agreeing to invest $1 billion in OpenAI.
- The deal, now, is off. OpenAI is winding down its work with Disney and no money ever changed hands, according to a source familiar with the situation.
- "We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators," Disney said in a statement to Axios.
State of play: OpenAI disclosed the changes to employees at a meeting on Tuesday, where it made several other announcements.
- Oversight of safety and security efforts will shift from CEO Sam Altman to other executives so that Altman can focus his efforts on raising capital and securing data centers and other computing resources, per The Information.
- Chief Research Officer Mark Chen will have responsibility for safety work, while President Greg Brockman will oversee security efforts, The Information reported.
- Meanwhile, the company has completed initial development for "Spud," its next major family of AI models, also per The Information
What we're watching: Video is seen as a key ingredient for so-called "world models" that understand how objects interact in the physical world — a key to work in robotics and other areas.
- OpenAI said work in those areas will continue.
