OpenAI has announced the closure of Soraits app for generating short videos with AI that it launched six months ago, immersed in tremendous expectation. The most immediate consequence, beyond the fact that countless doubts have been put on the table about the current role of OpenAI in the generative AI business: Disney has canceled the 1 billion license agreement of dollars that he announced in December.
Kaputt. Just one day after they received notice at Disney that OpenAI was canceling the video tool, the generative AI company confirmed it publicly with a message on X: “We say goodbye to Sora“. According to anonymous internal sources who They spoke to Reutersthe announcement was experienced at Disney as a “big rug pull” that no one had anticipated. The pact between the two companies, which had not yet completed its formal closure, is thus buried.
What it consisted of. Disney would have become, under the deal, Sora’s first major content partner. The agreement contemplated that users could generate videos with more than 200 characters from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar and ‘Star Wars’ franchises from simple text instructions. Some of those videos would appear on Disney+. As part of the pact, Disney had agreed to license iconic characters such as Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader to OpenAI for use in Sora, and to participate with $1 billion in the company.
The economy. An important detail is that, for what was known, The transaction was structured entirely in stock options, not cash. That is to say, the notable amount of money that Disney was going to give up had not reached OpenAI at any time. According to the official statementthe deal consisted of “a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and options to acquire additional participation,” suggesting an even more complex structure, and the details of which were never made public.
In any case, the agreement was subject to the negotiation of definitive contracts, corporate approvals and customary closing conditions that were not completed before the announcement of Sora’s closure. In Disney statements after the newsthe company will continue to look for new ways to reach its fans through AI.
Sora’s life. Sora was launched as a standalone app in September 2025 and was OpenAI’s second standalone app after ChatGPT. Reached one million downloads in less than five days since its launch. However, Sora’s total accumulated revenue over its entire life as a product was around $2.1 million, while the estimated cost of its operation was around $15 million per day in computing infrastructure. Downloads, which had peaked at 3.3 million in November, had fallen to 1.1 million in February.
And now what. The closure occurs at a key moment for OpenAI, which has been in a process of visible strategic redefinition for weeks: the company is reorienting towards high productivity use caseswhere Anthropic has built a solid business with his Claude. Because of this, Sora was not the only casualty of OpenAI’s organizational chart, which also discontinued its instant purchase feature and announced that will concentrate efforts in your web browser, ChatGPT and Codex. The simultaneous withdrawal of several products makes it clear that this is not a one-time adjustment but rather a deeper reorganization.
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