How-to·March 25, 2026, 20:12

Sora is shut down: How users saved their videos

AI-generated from the sources listed.

OpenAI has shut down its video service Sora about six months after launch. Users could export their content, and developer access will close later.

OpenAI has said goodbye to Sora, the service that let people make videos by typing a text prompt. According to NYU Shanghai RITS, OpenAI announced on March 24, 2026, that the service would be shut down. BGR dates the announcement to March 25. Sora 2 and the app arrived in September 2025, so the shutdown came about six months later.

Shutdown dates

According to OpenAI's own help article, Sora on the web and in the app was shut down on April 26, 2026. The Sora API, the technical access developers use to connect the service to other programs, is scheduled to close on September 24, 2026.

Users could export their Sora content via sora.chatgpt.com/sunset and received an email when the export was ready. OpenAI recommended doing so as soon as possible. After the shutdown and any export period, OpenAI permanently deletes the data tied to the user's use of Sora. For ordinary users, that means videos that were not saved can no longer be expected to exist.

The Sora team wrote that they are saying goodbye to the app and thanking everyone who created content in it.

Why is OpenAI shutting it down?

OpenAI said its reason is that the team wants to focus on research into world simulation. That research is meant to help develop robots that can handle physical tasks in the real world.

The NYU page also repeats media reports that the shutdown is also about shifting computing power, meaning GPU chips, to more lucrative products in text, reasoning and code. The media also point to an expected IPO in 2026. These are the media's assessments, not something OpenAI itself has said.

The sources disagree on what it cost to run the service. Some estimates cite about 1 million dollars a day, while BGR cites an estimate of 15 million dollars a day. Neither figure comes from OpenAI.

Disney deal fell through

In December 2025, Disney and OpenAI announced a three-year deal covering more than 200 characters from Marvel, Pixar and Disney Animation, along with a 1 billion dollar investment. No money had yet changed hands, and the deal collapsed with the shutdown.

Other video models are carrying on, including Google Veo 3.1, ByteDance Seedance 2.0, Runway Gen-4.5 and Kling AI.