By Angela Palumbo and George Glover

OpenAI is shutting Sora down just months after launch as the company shifts priorities. The app's fall from grace is also a sign that people need artificial intelligence to be more than just an entertaining novelty for it to remain a part of their daily lives.

Social media users can't avoid AI even if they try. Someone might be enjoying a video of a dog playing with an unusual toy or a video of a chef making an intricate meal. That enjoyment quickly fades after looking through a comment section that's filled with people claiming "this video is AI."

Sora offered an escape from the uncertainty. It was an app that hosted videos solely created by AI. Users quickly flooded Sora to explore such a unique offering.

OpenAI initially released the stand-alone Sora app in September 2025. According to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, worldwide downloads of Sora reached 5 million in October, a 4,400% spike from 107,000 downloads in September. Sora also became the number one app in the App Store in October.

"The fact that no one had ever done this before made it exciting," Mark Weinstein, author and founder of social network MeWe, told Barron's.

"Everybody wants to try the latest and greatest. And this company -- OpenAI -- is already very popular, so it made perfect sense that it started off fast," Weinstein added.

Sora's popularity helped it land a major deal with Walt Disney. Disney and OpenAI announced in December that they reached a three-year licensing agreement. Under the deal, Sora would be able to add characters from Disney's franchises into user-generated videos. The deal also included a $1 billion investment from Disney into OpenAI.

That deal is now off the table. "As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere," a Disney spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.

Disney didn't respond to a Barron's request for comment.

The shutdown of the app follows a drop in downloads. Sensor Tower research shows that since November, month-over-month download growth has been negative, declining 47%, 36%, 31% and 25% month-over-month in December, January, February, and so far in March, respectively.

Monthly active users also dropped. In March there were 5 million, according to Sensor Tower. This was a drop from their peak of 6 million in December. This slowdown happened even after global expansion, with the app announcing in a post on X in December that it launched in 10 new countries, including Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.

An OpenAI spokesperson told Barron's that "we've decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer app and API. As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks."

Weinstein said that one reason he thinks the app's success didn't last is because it lacked the human connection aspect that makes social media so popular. He also added that while Sora was a fun "novelty," it lacked the usefulness factor that other AI platforms provide.

"There's so much that AI does that's useful from a functional standpoint in our society," he said, adding that if an AI product isn't "useful, and you're just dependent on curiosity, and if the curiosity factor doesn't lead to stickiness, then game over."

Raymond James analyst Ric Prentiss wrote in a note on Monday that another reason the app lost traction was due to people's wariness of AI content.

"The lack of sustained traction for Sora does suggest that consumers may not readily embrace fully AI-generated video as their primary video entertainment source, at least for now," Prentiss wrote on Wednesday. "These models should continue to rapidly advance, but we think the 'AI slop' label remains a high barrier for many consumers, at least beyond the initial novelty and creation of memes."

According to a report from Pew Research, 50% of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited.

The app's popularity decline seems to be just one reason OpenAI made this decision. Forbes reported in November that it cost OpenAI about $5 billion a year to run Sora. Bill Peebles, the head of Sora, said in an X post on Oct. 30 that "we have been quite amazed by how much our power users want to use sora, and the economics are currently completely unsustainable."

Now, OpenAI can direct more resources toward its Codex coding model at a time when Anthropic is making up ground in that space with its own program Claude Code, according to KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson.

"We do not believe companies make these changes lightly," Patterson wrote in a research note on Tuesday. OpenAI likely "realized devoting more resources to products with momentum like Codex would be materially more impactful than the cost of scaling Sora."

Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com and George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 25, 2026 14:39 ET (18:39 GMT)

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