Why OpenAI really shut down Sora

OpenAI discontinued its Sora artificial intelligence video generation tool last week, six months after releasing it to the public. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the decision followed from low adoption and high running costs rather than suspicions of a data collection effort tied to user face uploads. Worldwide users peaked at around one million before falling below 500,000. The service consumed roughly one million dollars per day in compute resources because video generation draws heavily on scarce artificial intelligence chips. A team inside OpenAI remained dedicated to the project while Anthropic attracted software engineers and enterprise customers through its Claude Code offering. Chief executive Sam Altman directed the shutdown to free capacity and refocus the company. Disney had committed one billion dollars to a partnership involving Sora yet learned of the closure less than one hour before the public announcement. The arrangement ended with the tool.