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Skip to Content * Politics * U.S. News * World * Local + o New York o Los Angeles o Chicago o Dallas-Fort Worth o Philadelphia o Washington, D.C. o Boston o Bay Area o South Florida o San Diego o Connecticut * Sports * Culture * Science * Shopping + o Early Amazon Big Spring Sale Deals * Tipline * Health * Business Subscribe * Share & Save -- * * * * * Subscriber HubSavedNewslettersProfileSubscriptionPreferences Search [ ] Sections * U.S. News * Politics * World * Business * Sports * Investigations * Culture & Trends * Health * Science * Tech * Weather * VIDEO * Photos * NBC Select * NBC Asian America * NBC BLK * NBC Latino * NBC OUT Local * New York * Los Angeles * Chicago * Dallas-Fort Worth * Philadelphia * Washington, D.C. * Boston * Bay Area * South Florida * San Diego * Connecticut tv * Today * Nightly News * Meet the Press * Dateline Featured * NBC News Now * Nightly Films * Stay Tuned * Special Features * Newsletters * Podcasts * Listen Now More From NBC * NBC.COM * NBCU Academy * Peacock * NEXT STEPS FOR VETS * NBC News Site Map * Help Follow NBC News * * * news Alerts There are no new alerts at this time Search [ ] * Facebook * Twitter * Email * SMS * Blue Sky * Whatsapp * Print * Reddit * Flipboard * Pinterest * Linkedin * Latest Stories * Politics * U.S. News * World * Sports * Culture * Science * Shopping * Tipline * Health * Business Artificial intelligence OpenAI is shutting down its Sora video-creation app Disney's deal with OpenAI, which the companies struck in December, will be dissolved. [1774390367] * * * * * * Add NBC News to Google OpenAI announces it's shutting down video platform Sora 02:33 Get more newson Share Add NBC News to Google March 24, 2026, 4:25 PM EDT / Updated March 24, 2026, 4:50 PM EDT By Steve Kopack, Jared Perlo and Daniel Arkin Listen to this article with a free account [0 ] 00:0000:00 OpenAI will soon shut down its Sora AI video-generation app, the company said in a surprising announcement Tuesday. "We're saying goodbye to Sora," the company wrote in a post on X. "We'll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work." The closure of the resource-intensive AI app comes ahead of an expected initial public stock offering from OpenAI in the coming months. OpenAI has recently come under intense pressure from rival AI company Anthropic, whose AI systems have soared in popularity among leading businesses and software engineers. Anthropic, with its flagship Claude family of AI models, has eschewed products like image and video generation to instead focus scarce computational resources on text and code generation. OpenAI's unveiling of Sora in 2024 rattled many in the entertainment industry, who quickly expressed concerns that the model's ability to easily and rapidly generate relatively high-quality video from text would displace human creators. In September, OpenAI debuted a second-generation Sora model that created even higher-quality videos with audio capabilities and more accurate physics, which led to even more intense blowback and concern from Hollywood. OpenAI paired the new model's launch with a standalone app, which was simply called Sora. The app became the most-downloaded in the iOS App Store's Photo and Video category within a day of its release, with many users creating lifelike videos of popular characters such as Lara Croft, Mario and Pikachu. But the videos raised alarm bells from copyright and deepfake experts. In December, the Walt Disney Co. surprised Hollywood after announcing that it had reached a three-year deal with OpenAI to bring many of its popular characters to Sora's artificial intelligence video generator. Disney also said it planned to make a $1 billion investment in OpenAI as part of the agreement. Disney pledged to become a "major customer" of OpenAI, using its services to develop new products and experiences, including for its Disney+ streaming service. In the wake of Tuesday's news, Disney's deal with OpenAI is not proceeding, according to a source familiar with the matter. Disney "respect[s] OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere," a spokesperson for the entertainment giant said. "We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators," the spokesperson said. In recent weeks, top OpenAI executives have said that they are sharpening the company's focus, recognizing that it cannot do "everything at once," according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Late last year, OpenAI's head of Sora, Bill Peebles, announced limits on the number of videos users could generate due to the limited supply of computer chips available to power the video-generation model. By shifting computing resources away from Sora, OpenAI could reallocate the computing chips to more lucrative coding, reasoning or text-generation tasks. Just weeks ago, OpenAI announced that it had raised $110 billion in fresh funding, vaulting the company's total value to about $730 billion. CORRECTION (March 24, 2026, 5:41 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated when OpenAI debuted its second-generation Sora model. It was in September, not October. Share Add NBC News to Google [steve] Steve Kopack Steve Kopack is a senior reporter at NBC News covering business and the economy. Jared Perlo Jared Perlo is a fellow covering AI. He is supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism and his work is produced exclusively by NBC News. [24111] Daniel Arkin Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News. Brian Cheung contributed. * About * Contact * Help * Careers * Ad Choices * Privacy Policy * Your Privacy Choices * CA Notice * Terms of Service * NBC News Subscription Terms of Service * NBC News Sitemap * Closed Captioning * Subscribe * Advertise * NBC Select (c) 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC