🎯 The Big Picture
🎯 The Big Picture The app had invited users to upload their own faces — so was this some kind of elaborate data grab? a new WSJ investigation , the real explanation is considerably more boring: Sora was a money pit that nobody was using, and keeping it alive was costing OpenAI the AI race. 📖 What Happened After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked at around a million and then collapsed to fewer than 500,000.
📖 What Happened
Meanwhile, the app was burning through roughly $1 million every day — not because people loved it but because video generation is so costly to run. Every user who dropped themselves into a fantastical scene was drawing down a finite supply of AI chips. While a whole team inside OpenAI was focused on making Sora work, Anthropic was quietly winning over the software engineers and enterprises that drive revenue.
Claude Code, in particular, was eating OpenAI’s lunch. So CEO Sam Altman made the call: kill Sora, free up compute, and refocus. If you want to understand just how sudden this was, consider what happened to Disney, per the WSJ: the entertainment giant had committed $1 billion to the partnership, yet found out Sora was being shut down less than an hour before the public.
💰 By the Numbers | 📊 | 💡 | |---|---| | $1 million | After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked a... | | $1 billion | So CEO Sam Altman made the call: kill Sora, free up compute,... | 🎤 Highlights • After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked at around a million and then collapsed to fewer than 500,000.
💰 By the Numbers
| 📊 Metric | 💡 Context |
|---|---|
| $1 million | Meanwhile, the app was burning through roughly every day — not becaus... |
| $1 billion | Claude Code, in particular, was eating OpenAI’s lunch. So CEO Sam Altm... |
🎤 Highlights
• Meanwhile, the app was burning through roughly $1 million every day — not because people loved it but because video generation is ...
• Claude Code, in particular, was eating OpenAI’s lunch. So CEO Sam Altman made the call: kill Sora, free up compute, and refocus. I...
• 💰 By the Numbers | 📊 | 💡 | |---|---| | $1 million | After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked a... | |...
🚀 Why It Matters
• Every user who dropped themselves into a fantastical scene was drawing down a finite supply of AI chips. While a whole team inside... ⚡ The Bottom Line So CEO Sam Altman made the call: kill Sora, free up compute, and refocus.
⚡ The Bottom Line
• Every user who dropped themselves into a fantastical scene was drawing down a finite supply of AI chips. While a whole team inside... ⚡ The Bottom Line So CEO Sam Altman made the call: kill Sora, free up compute, and refocus.
📰 Source: TechCrunch AI 🔗