OpenAI shuts down Sora — and the Disney deal collapses

OpenAI is discontinuing its video generation model Sora. The company confirmed Tuesday that both the app and API access will be shut down, with no plans to integrate the functionality into ChatGPT.

The announcement came directly from the Sora team: «We're saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you.»

The decision has major consequences. In December, Disney announced a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI in which the company would invest $1 billion and license its characters for use within Sora. That deal is now also over.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Sam Altman informed staff about the shutdown. The move follows Altman's declaration of a "code red" earlier this year, as ChatGPT lost ground to Google Gemini.

Sora launched with great fanfare at the end of 2024 and was quickly seen as a revolution in AI-generated video. The decision to pull the product is an unusual move — and signals that OpenAI is consolidating its product portfolio around its core offerings ChatGPT and Codex.

Details on the shutdown timeline and how users can preserve their work will be shared in the coming days, according to the Sora team.