OpenAI Sora Economics Revealed: $15M/Day Compute, $2.1M Lifetime Revenue, Disney Deal Dead

TechCrunch·high signal

TechCrunch published the full financial picture behind Sora's March 24 shutdown: peak downloads fell 66% from 3.33M (Nov 2025) to 1.13M (Feb 2026), compute costs hit $15M/day, total lifetime revenue was just $2.1M, and the rumored $1B Disney licensing deal never closed. The Sora team continues as a research unit focused on world simulation for robotics. Standalone app and sora.com shut down April 26; API sunset September 24. This is the most detailed compute-economics autopsy of a major AI product to date.