A billion-dollar collaboration that Disney and OpenAI once predicted could remake Hollywood instead quietly flamed out Tuesday, its death marked by a single post on social media.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” the Sora team said in the statement.
“To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”
That’s a far cry from the announcement of Disney and OpenAI’s “landmark agreement” just four months ago, where Disney’s then-CEO Bob Iger and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted Sora would “unlock new possibilities in imaginative storytelling.”
Iger said, “The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”
He continued, “Bringing together Disney’s iconic stories and characters with OpenAI’s groundbreaking technology puts imagination and creativity directly into the hands of Disney fans in ways we’ve never seen before, giving them richer and more personal ways to connect with the Disney characters and stories they love.”
Cheng Xin via Getty Images
Under the three-year blockbuster deal, Disney pledged to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and allow Sora to generate videos using more than 200 iconic characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.
Sources told Reuters that Disney was blindsided by the news. “It was a big rug-pull,” the person, who requested anonymity, said.
Generating the AI videos required significant, expensive, computing power, another person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
And while OpenAI has wads of cash on hand thanks to prodigious fundraising, it’s hemorrhaging money even faster. With the company looking to go public later this year, shutting down Sora made sense.
Relatedly, ChatGPT, another OpenAI product, will no longer generate videos based on text prompts.
OpenAI launched the short-form video clip generator in 2024. A standalone app was opened to the public in September 2025 and was immediately awash in blatant intellectual property theft and what’s become known as AI slop.
CODA, a Japanese anti-piracy group whose members include Studio Ghibli, demanded OpenAI stop stealing its content to train models.
