It has been pointed out that Sora, which is being discontinued, was costing $1 million per day.

OpenAI's video generation app, ' Sora ,' was announced to be shut down in March 2026, approximately six months after its release. It is reported that Sora incurred enormous costs.

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Sora Video Generator Reportedly Costs OpenAI $1 Million a Day | PCMag
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Sora is a free video creation app that allows you to generate videos of your choice simply by entering text. You can even feature yourself or your friends in your videos, and despite being invitation-only upon its release, it quickly rose to the top of the App Store charts.

However, due to lax copyright restrictions, the number of problematic videos eventually increased. The mass production of deepfake videos of Martin Luther King Jr., which drew protests from his family, and the creation of copyrighted content, among other incidents , led OpenAI to promise improvements.

On the other hand, OpenAI has also shown a willingness to incorporate and utilize copyrighted content with consent, such as by signing a contract with The Walt Disney Company.

Disney invests 160 billion yen in OpenAI, enabling the creation of Disney characters using Sora and ChatGPT - GIGAZINE

However, in March 2026, OpenAI suddenly decided to shut down Sora.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sora had become a burden for OpenAI in the months following its release, a trend that intensified as the company focused its business on more profitable services ahead of its IPO.

Sora's user base peaked at around 1 million shortly after its release, but has since declined to less than 500,000, resulting in a daily loss of approximately $1 million (about 160 million yen), according to sources.

OpenAI was just weeks away from completing the development of a new AI model codenamed 'Spud,' and needed to allocate more computing resources for the coding and enterprise-grade products that would support it. Sora was being discontinued because it was consuming excessive resources without generating any profit.

Going forward, OpenAI plans to focus on new 'super apps' that incorporate agent-based AI tools that autonomously perform tasks such as software creation, data analysis, and travel booking.

OpenAI is planning a desktop version of a 'super app' - GIGAZINE

According to reports, CEO Sam Altman stated that the Sora development team will now focus on long-term areas such as robotics. An OpenAI spokesperson said that they are prioritizing the allocation of computing resources based on the areas that will generate the most long-term economic value.