OpenAI Kills Sora; Google Deepmind Seizes the AI Video Moment
OpenAI announced Sora's shutdown on March 24, 2026, with the standalone consumer app going fully offline by April 2026. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, Sora's mobile app peaked at roughly 4.2 million monthly active users in January 2026 before declining 38% over the following weeks.
The Strategic Pivot
Reports indicate OpenAI is exploring bringing Sora's video generation capabilities directly into ChatGPT, making it a feature rather than a product—a fundamentally different bet and probably the right one.
Google's Counter-Move
Google DeepMind has been methodically iterating on its Veo video generation models, with Veo 3.1 (including a lighter "Fast" option) building on previous releases by introducing richer native audio generation, improved narrative control, better prompt adherence, and enhanced realism in physics and motion.
Contradictory Strategic Views: While OpenAI pivoted to integrating video into ChatGPT for feature leverage, Google pursued standalone platform maturity—two opposite bets on where AI video lives long-term.
My Take
This is a humbling lesson in infrastructure economics. Sora was brilliant technically but catastrophically expensive to run at consumer scale. OpenAI is right to fold it into ChatGPT where the infrastructure costs can be amortized. Google wins here not because Veo is better, but because Google's deep integration with search, advertising, and cloud services gives it structural advantages in scaling responsibly.
