OpenAI Kills Sora to Refocus for IPO
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- OpenAI will discontinue Sora, its AI video app, and the Sora API roughly six months after launch, with the Sora research team shifting to "world simulation research to advance robotics," per a company spokesperson.
- Sora downloads collapsed from 3.3 million worldwide in November 2025 to 1.1 million by February 2026, according to third-party analytics firm Appfigures.
- CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC OpenAI needs to be "ready to be a public company," tying the Sora shutdown to pre-IPO focus under a new mandate to concentrate resources on fewer products.
- Codex surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue in January 2026 and will anchor a planned consumer "super app" combining ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas into a single interface.
- Disney withdrew its planned $1 billion investment in OpenAI after being blindsided by the Sora shutdown, the company said.
- VP of Research Jerry Tworek left OpenAI in January after struggling to secure resources for his next project, a warning sign as the company deprioritizes projects and competes with Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta for top talent.
Why it matters: OpenAI is trading its experimental, everything-at-once posture for the narrower product discipline public-market investors demand, and the costs of that pivot are already visible: a $1 billion Disney deal evaporated, a six-month-old consumer product is being killed, and a research VP just walked out. With Codex now generating over $1 billion in annualized revenue, the company's IPO narrative rests on enterprise coding and a unified consumer app — not the splashy bets that defined the Altman era.
