[Special Report] Claiming Strategic Shift, OpenAI Announces Abandonment of Video Generation App Sora

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（Source: Xinhua News Agency）

Claiming a strategic shift, OpenAI announces it will abandon the video-generation app Sora

OCEAN

On the 24th, the U.S. OpenAI announced a major strategic shift initiative. This AI startup will end video-generation businesses such as the “Sky (Sora)” app, and terminate its cooperation agreement with The Walt Disney Company of the United States that included a $1 billion investment; it will instead further focus on core products such as robotics.

According to reports from media outlets including The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., OpenAI intends to re-focus on business users and programming tools, among other areas, with all products consolidated into a “super app,” aiming to complete its first public offering (IPO) as early as the fourth quarter of this year.

【Came to an abrupt stop】

On the 24th, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that it will gradually phase out products that use its video model, including the Sora standalone application for consumers, the Sora API service for developers, the video support feature within ChatGPT, and the Sora official website. According to a report by Agence France-Presse, OpenAI said it will later publish a timeline for the phasing out of these products.

In early 2024, OpenAI launched the Sora model that can generate videos based on text, and in September 2025 it launched the standalone Sora app. The app was designed to encourage users to share AI-generated videos via social media, sparking quite a stir. In December of the same year, Disney and OpenAI announced a three-year cooperation agreement. Disney agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and grant to the latter more than 200 characters that it owns the copyrights to for use. Now, less than four months later, the two sides’ cooperation has already come to an abrupt halt.

According to sources familiar with the matter who disclosed it to the Financial Times in the UK and Reuters, Disney did not actually invest $1 billion, because in late December 2025, Altman sent out a “red alert” internally at OpenAI, urging employees to focus on core priorities, including competing with rival Anthropic for enterprise users, and ensuring ChatGPT’s advantages over competitors such as Google. Hints that OpenAI was shifting its strategic direction at the time meant that the agreement with Disney never truly took hold.

However, on the evening of the 23rd, the two companies still held discussions regarding a cooperation project. Only half an hour after the talks ended, the Disney side suddenly found out that the entire Sora business had been called off, leaving them feeling caught off guard.

On the 24th, Disney issued a statement confirming that the prior agreements between the two parties had been terminated. “With the rapid advancement of the newly emerging AI field, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video-generation business and shift its priorities,” a source familiar with the matter said. The two companies are still discussing whether there are other ways to cooperate or invest.

【Chaos in the transition】

On the 24th, Altman said that going forward, the Sora team will focus on long-term investments such as robotics.

According to multiple media reports, even when the Sora app first entered the market, some employees questioned why OpenAI would allocate expensive and scarce massive computing resources to that business—thereby squeezing out the allocation of computing power for other products. The app’s user stickiness was clearly insufficient; by January of this year, its download volume had already fallen by 45%.

In a company-wide meeting in March, Fiona Cymo, then CEO of OpenAI’s apps division, said that employees must not be distracted by “sideline tasks.” She proposed at the time a vision of integrating the agent system into OpenAI’s products.

For strategic transformation, OpenAI has recently rolled out a series of initiatives, intending to channel all computing resources and top talent toward directions for productivity tools—products that can be used simultaneously by both enterprise and individual users. Last week, OpenAI announced that it would integrate the ChatGPT desktop app, the programming tool Codex, and the browser into a single “super app.” Cymo’s title also became “Chief Executive Officer of General Artificial Intelligence Deployment.”

Based on combined accounts from multiple media outlets, OpenAI’s current competition with rivals such as Anthropic has intensified—Anthropic focuses on training the programming capabilities of its Claude model, giving it an advantage in the enterprise user market. OpenAI’s strategy of advancing on multiple fronts has long been criticized: the series of products it has launched not only makes corporate organizational structures more complex, but also leads to infighting internally. Although OpenAI’s average daily users reach the 1 billion-plus range, its costs have been rising far faster than its revenue growth, and its business model has been criticized as difficult to sustain. Openly and suddenly saying goodbye to the Sora app on the 24th may indicate that OpenAI’s current business reorganization is still in chaos. (End) (Exclusive Special Report, Xinhua News Agency)

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