OpenAI Shuts Down Sora Video App After Six Months

OpenAI announced it's discontinuing Sora, the AI video platform that launched in September 2025 and hit a million downloads faster than ChatGPT. The standalone app let users generate video of real people using uploaded "cameos" - a feature that gained viral traction but apparently couldn't justify the compute costs. Sam Altman told employees the shutdown frees resources for next-generation models. The Disney partnership built around Sora is also dead. Launching a product to massive consumer adoption and killing it six months later is a pattern OpenAI has avoided until now, and it raises questions about how the company evaluates product-market fit versus research showcase. Google shelved similar video generation features in Gemini last year, and Runway and Pika have been quietly narrowing their focus to professional workflows rather than consumer virality.