--- title: "OpenAI Is Reportedly Burning a Ludicrous Amount of Cash on Sora" description: "OpenAI's AI video-generating app, Sora, is likely costing the company an astronomical amount of money to run, as Forbes reports." date: "2025-11-11" modified: "2025-11-11" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-burning-cash-ai-video-slop-sora" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" --- # OpenAI Is Reportedly Burning a Ludicrous Amount of Cash on Sora ![OpenAI's AI video-generating app, Sora, is likely costing the company an astronomical amount of money to run, as Forbes reports.]() *Getty / Futurism* Despite its [half-a-trillion-dollar valuation](), the reality is that OpenAI is almost certainly burning through cash at an alarming rate. According to [recent filings](), the ChatGPT maker lost a [whopping $12 billion]() last quarter alone. Yet, it [wants to spend well over $1 trillion]() over the next several years, once again stoking fears over an [AI bubble]() that could [wipe out the entire US economy]() if it were to burst. Even its AI video-generating app, Sora, which [debuted in late September](), is likely costing the company an astronomical amount of money to run, as [*Forbes* reports](). The app — which is currently being used to spew a [disturbing quantity of largely meaningless AI slop]() onto the web, but is still only available for a minuscule number of early users — could already be costing the firm $5 billion a year, or roughly $15 million per *day*, according to the publication's estimates. A single ten-second clip could cost OpenAI roughly $1.30, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Deepak Mathivanan told *Forbes*. Even OpenAI's Sora lead Bill Peebles admitted in an [October 30 tweet]() that the "economics are currently completely unsustainable." While we don't have a strong sense of the accuracy of Forbes' estimates, as they rely on "several moving targets," such as fluctuating prices of AI chips, efficiency, and the number of users and videos being generated, the bottom line is that it's staggeringly expensive [to run a large-scale video-generating app](). Using AI to generate video is [vastly more resource-intensive]() than having a tool like ChatGPT output text, which already [requires vast amounts of resources](). Besides an [enormous and growing carbon footprint](), making financial sense of OpenAI's foray into AI video slop remains difficult. In an [early October blog post](), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that the company launched the app in the absence of a sound financial plan to recoup the enormous costs of running Sora, let alone meaningfully address [glaring copyright infringement issues]() that [persist to this day](). "It’s a classic internet playbook to not focus on the costs initially so much as building an audience and building an engagement because we’ve seen time and again, these companies can figure out ways to monetize this engagement," financial group Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley told *Forbes*. Late last month, OpenAI started limiting users to 30 free videos per day and [started charging $4 for roughly ten additional videos]() beyond the daily limit. But even the daily limit could soon go away. "Eventually we will need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth (we won't have enough \[graphics processing units\] to do it otherwise!)," Peebles [tweeted](), "but we'll be transparent as it happens." "In the meantime, enjoy the crazy usage limits," he added. Apart from blowing billions of dollars on slop memes that are polluting the internet, OpenAI has plenty of other Sora-related fires to put out as well. For one, the company is actively drawing the ire of rightsholders over copyright issues. Last week, a group representing Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, and other major Japanese publishers [sent a letter to OpenAI]() demanding that it stop using their copyrighted content to train the video-generating AI tool. In short, Sora is only the tip of the iceberg of OpenAI's alarming financial situation. As the company continues to light tens of billions of dollars on fire, the firm is under major pressure to justify its spending commitments. And at the end of the day, it's all to generate clips of [SpongeBob SquarePants cooking meth]() and [Mister Rogers going on expletive-filled rants](). **More on Sora:** [*People Are Using Sora to Create Unbelievably Cursed Gender Reveals*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()