OpenAI shuts down the Sora video app

OpenAI closed public access to the Sora video-generation app on 26 April 2026, a month after announcing the shutdown; API access was set to end on 24 September 2026. Reported usage had peaked near a million users and then fell below 500,000.

Why it mattered OpenAI gave no official reason. Reporting linked the closure to compute costs, a shortage its chief financial officer had described a month earlier, and a shift toward enterprise products.

Corrections

  • 2026-09-01 - This entry’s “why” originally said the CFO’s compute-shortage remark came “days earlier”; she made it in a 24 March 2026 interview, about a month before this 26 April closure (the cited TechCrunch piece is close in time to the CFO’s remark, not to this later event); corrected.