Sora Is Dead, and the AI-Video Land Rush Is Over

Sora is dead. Not winding down, not pivoting — discontinued. OpenAI's help center has carried the notice for months now: the consumer web and app closed in April, and the API followed on September 24. The flagship that was going to remake Hollywood, that had directors and agencies and a PR campaign worthy of a studio launch, is simply gone. What happened. The timeline is quieter than the story deserves. April 2026: Sora's web and app shut, with export windows and refund notices. September 24: the API closed, leaving businesses that had built on it scrambling — migration guides appeared within days. OpenAI never gave it a funeral; the help-center article did the talking. That silence is itself the first angle: this wasn't announced as a strategy, it was discovered as a fact. Why it matters more than one product. Sora's death is the closing bracket on the AI-video land rush. Read the pricing record alongside it: Google raised Veo 3.1 to $0.40 per second — double its launch price — and pushed the cheap tiers to 720p only. Pika raised prices ~25% this cycle. Runway held. The pattern of a market shaking out is unmistakable: the subsidized era of consumer AI video is over, the su...