OpenAI Shuts Down Sora App Six Months After Launch

OpenAI announced on March 24 that it is shutting down Sora, its standalone AI video app, with no exact shutdown date given at the time of announcement. The company said on X: "We're saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you." OpenAI added that the Sora research team would refocus on world simulation research to support robotics. The Sora API will also be discontinued. Sora launched in September 2025 as a TikTok-style app built around AI-generated video. It hit number one in the App Store's Photo and Video category within 24 hours and initially racked up over 3.3 million downloads in its first two months. But downloads fell to about 1.1 million by February 2026, and the app generated only $2.1 million in in-app purchases, far short of what was needed to justify its GPU costs. OpenAI's head of Sora said in November 2025 that the company's graphics processing units "are melting" under the demand load, leading to generation limits that frustrated users. The app also became notorious for weak moderation, deepfakes of public figures including Martin Luther King Jr. and Robin Williams, and widespread copyright violations involving characters from Nintendo, Naruto, and Marvel. Disney, which had signed a three-year licensing deal with OpenAI in December 2025 and planned a $1 billion investment, has now ended the partnership following the shutdown. The closure reflects a broader shift in how OpenAI is prioritizing its resources ahead of a planned IPO later in 2026. The company is cutting consumer experiments and redirecting compute and engineering toward enterprise tools that generate predictable revenue. Rival Anthropic has taken the opposite approach from the start, focusing entirely on text and code tools like Claude Code, which has already surpassed $2.5 billion in annualized revenue. OpenAI is now following that direction. For content creators and marketers in Nigeria who were exploring AI video tools, Sora's closure is a reminder that consumer AI products in this cycle are moving fast and not all of them will survive to maturity. Tools like Runway, Kling, and Pika remain active alternatives for AI video generation. Build your workflow around AI tools that have a clear revenue model, not just a viral moment.