OpenAI discontinues Sora

Background

Sora is OpenAI’s text-to-video model. Its app and API were offered for a period before the company decided to end the service.^[1]

What happened

On 24 March 2026 OpenAI announced on X that it was discontinuing Sora in its app and API.^[1] The Sora app shut down on 26 April 2026.^[1]

The Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models were scheduled to shut down on 24 September 2026.^[2]

Key details

OpenAI gave no specific reason for the decision. Reports linked it to compute shortages, to costs of about $1 million a day, and to a shift toward enterprise products.^[1]

Worldwide users had peaked near 1 million before falling below 500,000.^[1]

Deadline reported that Disney’s planned $1 billion investment tied to Sora would not move forward.^[3]

Sora was a text-to-video model, which means it generated video clips from written prompts. Video generation is computationally expensive, and reports linked the shutdown to running costs, although OpenAI gave no specific reason.^[1]

A shutdown date announced in advance gives users and developers time to move their work. In this case the app closed about a month after the announcement, while the API timeline ran until a later date in September 2026.^[1][2]

The Sora shutdown is one of several product changes that OpenAI recorded in 2026, alongside the advertising tests in ChatGPT and the GPT-5.x model releases. Readers who want the wider picture can compare it with those entries.^[1]

A text-to-video model takes a written description and produces a short video clip. People who used the app to make video from text would have needed other tools once it closed on 26 April 2026, and developers using the API had until the scheduled shutdown date for the Videos API and its models.^[1][2]

Impact

The shutdown ended a consumer video product that OpenAI had offered in its app and API.^[1] Deadline also reported that the Disney investment tied to Sora would not move forward.^[3]