OpenAI will shut down Sora, its AI video-generation platform, and discontinue supporting it as a consumer app and API offering. The announcement has derailed a proposed $1 billion investment from Disney that was connected to Sora and is no longer moving forward. OpenAI first introduced Sora in February 2024, and Sora reportedly cost about $15 million per day to run.
OpenAI said it is refocusing on ‘world simulation research to advance robotics’ and on longer-term world simulation research. It also said it is emphasizing its roadmap to artificial general intelligence and the compute needed to deliver agentic AI capabilities as priorities in that shift.
“As we continue to focus on our roadmap to AGI and the compute needed to deliver agentic AI capabilities, we’re making the tough decision to discontinue supporting Sora as a consumer app and API offerings.”
“When we released Sora, our goal was to teach AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion.”
“We will continue to prioritize longer-term world simulation research, especially as it pertains to robotics and helping people solve problems that require real-world interaction.”
Sora 2 is a more advanced model that was released alongside a standalone Sora mobile app. The Sora iOS app introduced a social-style video feed that displayed short AI-generated clips in a scrolling format. The mobile app included ‘cameos’ to insert users into AI-generated scenes, enabling users to place themselves within generated footage.
Sora faced intellectual-property concerns over recreating characters and copyrighted franchises, raising questions about how the platform could reproduce protected material. In December, OpenAI and Disney announced a three-year agreement to license roughly 250 Disney characters for use in AI-generated videos.
The platform also posed misinformation risks, including realistic-looking fabricated footage depicting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a cat suit.
In December, OpenAI and Disney announced a three-year agreement to license roughly 250 Disney characters for use in AI-generated videos. The announcement described the arrangement as a fixed-term licensing deal covering those characters for AI-generated video content. After OpenAI announced it would discontinue Sora as a consumer app and API, a proposed $1 billion investment from Disney tied to Sora is no longer moving forward. The reporting linked the halted investment directly to OpenAI’s decision about the Sora platform.
The December licensing agreement and the status of the proposed investment were presented as distinct elements of the same set of announcements. The publicly reported material did not provide further contractual details about implementation or the next steps for the character-licensing arrangement.
OpenAI is shifting focus toward longer-term world simulation research and the development of agentic AI capabilities, and that refocusing prompted the decision to shut down the Sora video app and to discontinue consumer and API support for the platform. The move has derailed the proposed Disney investment linked to Sora and highlights broader concerns reported around operational costs, intellectual-property issues, and the potential for misinformation enabled by AI-generated video.
