OpenAI is shutting down its standalone Sora video app, causing Disney to exit a $1B investment deal tied to Sora's character licensing.
OpenAI announced it is shutting down the Sora standalone AI video app, only months after its launch last fall. Disney, which had pledged $1 billion to OpenAI and licensed its characters for use in Sora, is now exiting that deal entirely. The original goal was to integrate Sora-powered AI video into Disney+. OpenAI says it will share details on timelines and work preservation, and insists it is not exiting AI video entirely — Sora's capabilities may survive inside ChatGPT.
If you've built anything on the Sora API, it's on death row with no confirmed timeline. OpenAI has signaled AI video will live inside ChatGPT, not as a standalone product or dedicated API — meaning the integration surface, pricing model, and endpoint structure are all up in the air. Google's Veo 2 via Vertex AI is now the most stable enterprise-grade AI video API on the market.
If you have any production code hitting the Sora API, this week test Google's Veo 2 API on Vertex AI with your existing video generation prompts and benchmark output quality and latency against your current Sora outputs — you need a fallback before OpenAI pulls the plug.
Suggested exercise · not independently tested. Access requirements and costs may vary.
Go to console.cloud.google.com and navigate to Vertex AI > Media Generation
Submit a test prompt matching your most common Sora use case, e.g.: 'Generate a 5-second cinematic clip of a red sports car driving through rain at night, photorealistic, 1080p'
Compare the returned video clip against equivalent Sora output on quality, coherence, and latency
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