OpenAI Halts Sora Development to Prioritise Enterprise Offerings
- tech360.tv
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
OpenAI is discontinuing its video generation tool Sora, the company said on Tuesday, in a surprise move by the ChatGPT maker, as it sharpens its focus on enterprise offerings ahead of a potential market debut later this year. The move involves winding down several Sora-related products.
"We're saying goodbye to Sora... we know this news is disappointing," the Sora team communicated in a post on social media platform X. Timelines for the app and application programming interface, along with details on preserving user work, will be shared at a later point.
OpenAI had published a blog post about Sora safety standards just a day before this announcement. Concurrently with Sora's discontinuation, OpenAI will also conclude its partnership with Disney, which was announced in Dec.
A spokesperson for Disney affirmed that the media giant respects "OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere." The three-year agreement had Disney set to invest USD 1 billion in OpenAI.
The partnership also permitted the artificial intelligence startup to utilise characters from Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel franchises in Sora. A team at Disney was working with OpenAI's Sora team last night when the entertainment giant learned its partner was "pivoting strategy," according to a source familiar with the matter.
OpenAI first unveiled Sora in early 2024, astounding the world with software capable of generating feature film-like quality videos based on text prompts. This launch spurred AI companies across the U.S. and China to accelerate the release of their own AI video generation models.
The company launched the standalone Sora app in Sept. 2025, allowing users to create and share AI videos. These videos could be spun from copyrighted content and shared to social media-like streams. The Wall Street Journal first reported Sora's discontinuation earlier on Tuesday.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed staff that the company would discontinue products that rely on its video models. Beyond the consumer application, OpenAI is also ending a version of Sora for developers.
The report further noted that video functionality would not be supported within ChatGPT either. This strategic shift arises as OpenAI faces intensifying pressure to ramp up its enterprise and coding product offerings.
Competition from rival AI startups and established technology giants is intensifying. Anthropic's concentration on training its models for coding has enabled its Claude Code product to achieve significant traction among developers, providing an advantage over competitors like OpenAI in the enterprise AI market.
OpenAI is discontinuing its Sora video generation tool.
The company is shifting its strategic focus to enterprise offerings and products.
The discontinuation encompasses the standalone Sora app, a developer version, and video functionality within ChatGPT.
Source: REUTERS
