OpenAI Kills Sora, Raises $10B at $730B Valuation

Sora is dead. The standalone app, sora.com, and the API are all being discontinued — less than 6 months after topping App Store charts. Downloads had already cratered 45% by January, compute costs were brutal, and a rumored $1B Disney licensing deal evaporated before a dollar changed hands.

The shutdown isn't distress — it's pruning. On the same day, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar confirmed a $10B add-on tranche to the $110B round closed in February (led by Amazon $50B, Nvidia $30B, SoftBank $30B). New investors include MGX, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Altimeter, and Microsoft rejoining. Post-money valuation: ~$850B. Total 2026 fundraising: $120B+.

The strategic signal is loud: kill expensive consumer bets, concentrate GPU capacity on coding and reasoning products, and consolidate the app surface. A desktop superapp merging ChatGPT, Codex, and the Atlas browser is already in development under Fidji Simo.

Why it matters: OpenAI is optimizing for margin before IPO — video generation burned cash, agentic coding prints it.