Winners & losers: OpenAI is scrapping its Sora video-creation app and, in the process, abruptly ending its high-profile $1 billion partnership with Walt Disney Co. Announced Tuesday, the decision signals a sharp pivot as the ChatGPT maker refocuses on enterprise products, coding tools, and its broader push toward artificial general intelligence.
The decision stunned Disney executives, who just 30 minutes earlier had been meeting with OpenAI teams about Sora's future, according to a person familiar with the matter. "It was a big rug-pull," the person told Reuters, describing how the media giant learned of the shutdown moments before it became public.
For OpenAI, Sora's cancellation underscores a growing internal realignment ahead of a possible stock market debut later this year. The company is redirecting resources from consumer-facing projects toward offerings viewed as more commercially sustainable – and less computationally costly.
– shirish (@shiri_shh) March 24, 2026
Sora debuted early last year, captivating Hollywood and the tech community with AI-generated videos that approached cinematic quality. The standalone app launched in September 2025, enabling users to generate short films and social-ready clips from text prompts.
But as Sora's popularity climbed, it demanded increasingly heavy computing resources, leaving other research teams with less capacity, according to another person familiar with company discussions.
Even with those pressures, few inside OpenAI expected such an abrupt end. Just a day earlier, the company had published a blog post outlining Sora's safety approach. By the next morning, employees were told the app was being discontinued. "We're saying goodbye to the Sora app," the Sora team posted on X, adding that "we know this news is disappointing."
The shutdown also derails Disney's plans to use Sora to produce AI-generated shorts featuring more than 200 characters. The partnership, announced a little over three months ago, included a proposed $1 billion investment in OpenAI. However, two people familiar with the deal said the deal never closed and no money changed hands.
Disney confirmed the collaboration has ended. "As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere," a spokesperson said. "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."
The two companies are still discussing whether a different kind of partnership could emerge, one of the sources said.
– Sora (@soraofficialapp) December 18, 2025
OpenAI's exit from Sora fits into a broader restructuring effort. Internally, executives are working toward what some describe as a "super app" that consolidates ChatGPT and its developer tools into a single platform. Reflecting that shift, Fidji Simo's role recently changed from CEO of applications to CEO of AGI deployment, while Sam Altman said the company's safety and security teams will no longer report directly to him.
OpenAI says it is not abandoning AI-generated video entirely, but the retreat could give competitors like Google more room to advance in the space. More broadly, the move shows how volatile the generative AI space remains, even for market leaders, as companies weigh innovation against the mounting costs of running massive computing models.
OpenAI pulls the plug on Sora, ending $1 billion Disney deal in sudden pivot
