Why OpenAI really shut down Sora
In Brief Posted: 8:09 PM PDT · March 29, 2026 Image Credits:Robert Way (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Connie Loizos Why OpenAI really shut down Sora OpenAI’s decision last week to shut down Sora, its AI video-generation tool, just six months after releasing it to the public raised immediate suspicions. The app had invited users to upload their own faces — so was this some kind of elaborate data grab? According to 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. So what happened? After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked at around a million and then collapsed to fewer than 500,000. Meanwhile, the app was burning through…
