OpenAI's business focus is on super applications: shutting down the AI video generation tool Sora and terminating cooperation with Disney.

According to a knowledgeable source, on Monday evening, Walt Disney Company (DIS.US) and the team at OpenAI were collaborating on a project related to the AI video tool Sora from OpenAI. Just 30 minutes after the meeting ended, the Walt Disney Company team suddenly received a notification that OpenAI would completely abandon the tool. OpenAI publicly announced this move on Tuesday. This decision marks the first step for the ChatGPT manufacturer to move towards more potentially lucrative areas (such as coding tools and enterprise clients). However, the sudden cancellation of Sora indicates that as OpenAI prepares for an IPO as early as later this year, streamlining the company's business may become chaotic. The decision to cancel Sora means that the billion-dollar deal between Walt Disney Company and ChatGPT developer OpenAI has come to an end. This deal was announced over three months ago. As part of this three-year agreement, Walt Disney Company stated that it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI and authorize the use of over 200 iconic characters for creating AI-generated short videos. However, two other sources revealed that the deal between the two companies was never completed, and no funds were transferred. Executives at OpenAI have been discussing the fate of Sora for some time. A source revealed that running this AI video application requires a significant amount of computing resources, which weakened the computing capabilities of other teams. Nevertheless, some employees of the OpenAI Sora team were still surprised when they learned about these changes on Tuesday morning, according to a source and another informant. Just the day before, OpenAI had just released a blog post about the security standards of Sora. "We have to say goodbye to Sora... We know this news is disappointing," the Sora team posted on X, adding that the timeline for the application and API, as well as details about retaining user work, will be shared later. OpenAI Focuses on Super Apps Executives at OpenAI are currently focusing on other research areas, including Siasun Robot & Automation technology and building general artificial intelligence. The company is integrating more features into a super app. To reflect this shift, Fidji Simo, Chief Business Officer of the company's application business, has also been renamed Chief Executive Officer of General Artificial Intelligence Deployment. In addition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the security team of OpenAI will no longer report directly to him. A spokesperson for Walt Disney Company stated that the media giant respects OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and focus on other areas. A source revealed that the two parties are discussing whether there are other ways to collaborate or invest. OpenAI first launched Sora in early 2024, a software that can generate high-quality, feature-length videos comparable to movies based on text prompts, shocking the entire tech industry. The release of Sora prompted many artificial intelligence companies in the US and China to accelerate the launch of their own AI video generation models. The company launched the standalone Sora app in September 2025, allowing users to create and share AI videos derived from copyrighted content and share them on platforms similar to social media. But as competition from rival AI startups and tech giants intensifies, OpenAI faces increasing pressure to speed up the development of its enterprise and coding products, making the cancellation of the Sora project all the more crucial. For example, Anthropic focuses on training its models for coding, which has helped its Claude Code product gain strong appeal among developers, giving the company a competitive edge in the enterprise AI market over OpenAI and other competitors.