The rumors confirmed. OpenAI is shutting down Sora. The entire product. The app, the service, video generation as a direction.
The official account posted "We're saying goodbye to Sora" and promised to clarify shutdown timelines and content export later.
Six months ago Sora 2 was number one in the App Store, dubbed "TikTok for AI." By January, installs dropped 45% month-over-month, user spending fell 32%. The app earned $1.4M in its entire lifetime. For a company preparing for an IPO, this isn't a product — it's an expense item. OpenAI is removing everything from its portfolio that eats compute and doesn't make money. And as I wrote before, it's pivoting toward business and coding tools.
For the industry, this is a bigger signal than it seems. If even OpenAI couldn't make AI video into a business — Runway, Kling, and Pika should think about whose money they plan to do it with. Or maybe it's a signal for OpenAI that it once again couldn't build a business, while its main competitor, Anthropic, is growing 3x faster.