Sora, a service that once caused a sensation in the global film and AI industries and touted its ability to generate realistic videos from text, is about to become history. OpenAI officially bid farewell to Sora in an article on X, announcing that it will discontinue its video generation service for consumer apps and APIs.
From meteoric rise to fall: Downloads plummeted by 32%, Sora couldn't escape the "novelty curse".
When Sora debuted in early 2025, its stunning visuals propelled it to the top of the US App Store download charts and drew considerable attention from Hollywood. However, this initial hype does not seem to have translated into stable user engagement.
According to data analytics firm Appfigures, Sora's new downloads and user spending have declined for several consecutive months since the beginning of 2026. Even during traditional peak app growth seasons (such as December), Sora's new downloads dropped by a significant 32% compared to November. This indicates that for the average consumer, simple video generation tools, lacking a robust editing ecosystem or low-barrier application scenarios, can easily lead to boredom and a sense of disinterest.
We're saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.
We'll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on…
— Sora (@soraofficialapp) March 24, 2026
Strategic Shift: Focusing on Robotics Research and GPT-5.2 Enterprise Applications
An OpenAI spokesperson stated in an interview that the Sora research team has not disbanded, but its development goals have fundamentally changed. Rather than maintaining a cash-burning video tool with an unclear profit model for consumers, OpenAI has chosen to shift its resources to the physics simulation technology needed to "advance robots in solving real-world tasks."
This shift aligns with OpenAI's overall strategy recently. Since releasing the GPT-5.2 model, designed to compete with the Google Gemini 3 Pro, OpenAI has entered "Code Red" mode, focusing its efforts on professional areas such as coding and data analysis that can generate substantial profits for businesses.
In a time when computing resources are extremely scarce, abandoning the computationally expensive film generation and instead supporting enterprise-level AI and physical robot research with higher commercial value is clearly the direction that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman values more at this stage.
Disney terminates $10 billion investment agreement, severely impacting cash flow.
The closure of Sora not only means the disappearance of a product, but also directly impacts OpenAI's financial strategy. Reports indicate that with the termination of Sora services, Disney, which had signed a cooperation agreement with OpenAI at the end of last year, has decided to withdraw from the agreement, causing its initial $10 billion investment to fall through.
For OpenAI, which is actively seeking a new round of financing to cope with high R&D expenditures, this huge loss of investment is a heavy blow. It also shows that the traditional film and television industry still holds a highly wait-and-see attitude or even withdraws investment before the stability and commercial sustainability of AI technology are clear.
