The decision was seemingly abrupt: Just a few months ago, Disney announced plans to invest $1 billion in OpenAI as part of a licensing deal to bring its characters to Sora, and earlier this week, workers from both companies were apparently still collaborating. Generating videos is much more costly than generating text is, and Sora has likely been a real financial drain: In the fall, Forbes estimated that Sora might be costing OpenAI millions of dollars daily, and Bill Peebles, who leads Sora, said that the economics were “completely unsustainable.” (OpenAI declined to comment on Forbes’s estimates at the time.) “We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s applications chief, reportedly told staff in a company-wide meeting earlier this month, explaining that the company needs to nail “productivity on the business front.” To do so, OpenAI is planning to nearly double its head count this year, including by hiring a team of specialists who will help other companies adopt its technology.
Author: Lila Shroff
Published at: 2026-03-25 23:52:00
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