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Ryan
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Jamie
sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply Guys, there is some huge news that you've probably heard, which is that OpenAI is shutting down Sora. There is some crazy new numbers that have just been released on why OpenAI is shutting down Sora and how much money it was bleeding the company. I think kind of the. I'd be curious what you heard about it, Jamie, but a lot of the things that I heard at the beginning were like, oh, they're just trying to focus on text because Anthropic is kind of growing with like some of their cloud code features and some of their cloud cowork features. So you know, they're trying to be more focused. I didn't realize how much of a money thing it was, but then there's the whole Google situation. There's a lot we're going to get into on this podcast. Before we do, I wanted to mention if you want to grow and scale your business using AI tools, the number one way that Jamie and I recommend you do that is joining our AI hustle school community. We have over 200 members in here and this is basically the place where we share all of our inside tips, tricks, strategies, workflows. This week I just recorded a 20 minute long tutorial on all of my workflows and a lot of the skills and projects I'm doing with Claude Cowork. So there is a new tool that completely takes control of your control of your entire computer. And I recently had it rebuild and migrate three websites that I've been building in the past and had it spin up hundreds of AI optimized articles pages. There's just like so many things that I've had it do. It is incredible. And literally whatever you do for work in any industry, Claude, coworkers. I mean even if you don't join the school community, like you guys need to get on cloud cowork. It's is big of a. It is as big of a thing as chatgpt in my opinion. Like it is a big of a leap. We finally have an agent that can take control of your computer, have editing videos. I'm like go to capcut, edit videos anyways. So this is amazing. We have a whole video and we're gonna be making a ton of content over on school community about this and dozens of other things. We have like you know, hundreds and hundreds of people and posts on there. So go check it out. Link is in the description. $19 a month and we help you grow and scale your business with AI tools showing everything we're doing. Okay Jamie, this whole Sora thing, what was, what was your like first impression on? I guess hearing that it's getting shut down.
Tyler Redick
I was a little bit surprised at first until we got into the numbers. But you know, because they had just struck a deal for I think $1 billion with Disney so they were going to be able to license some of the Disney characters on Sora. So like it seemed like they're really ramping it up and trying to really promote it. But as of last week I think the. They released that they were losing a million dollars per day on Sora because of. So they had so few users that were actually using it. And so yeah, so they had the peak users on Sora were around a million dollars or sorry, a million, which I don't know if that means per day or per week, whatever that is, but now it's down to around 500,000. So really no one was using this, which is, I don't know, a little bit surprising. That seems like a really, really low number to me. But you know, from, from my perspective I. Cause I was making some AI video content but I would never use Sora because it was primarily vertical and I. The stuff I was doing was for like websites and things like that. So I was using Google VO3 so I don't know. Jayden, is this a surprising thing to you or what are your thoughts on the whole thing?
Jamie
I've heard a Bunch of different numbers, by the way, on this. So one of them is, like, from TechCrunch, they reported from, I think maybe the Wall Street Journal that it was losing a million dollars a day. I actually saw another number that it was costing them $15 million a day from a different report. It's hard because OpenAI hasn't come out with these numbers. People are just estimating and looking at some, like, internal stuff to try to figure it out. But what's crazy is, yeah, the usage went way down and apparently it's only ever made $2 million of people just subscribing to SORA exclusively. So it's not a big revenue generator. And it could be costing billions in compute costs every single year. So it wasn't making a lot of money. And it was costing an insane amount of money. Some estimates I saw said it was costing them $5 billion a year, or that's how much they were on track to spend if they kept it running for a full year. And so that's kind of why they shut it down, was they wanted to move that compute to something more valuable, which is robotics is kind of the direction that they're moving it into. And so I think, yeah, it could be a focus thing, right? They're concerned that it's, you know, it's taking too much focus and Anthropic is beating them in kind of the text, which was their original area that they were winning in. But I think it's also like a money thing. Now. One crazy thing that you mentioned is the Disney deal had committed about a billion dollars to this partnership. They found out it was getting, you know, the plug pulled on it. And if Disney's committing a kind of a billion dollars or if there's like a billion dollar deal with Disney on this, I think that even still, this just this whole partnership did not make any sense. And so, yeah, they had to shut it down, which is crazy. And it leads a bigger question, which I have been thinking about, which is like, what about all of the other video companies? Like, if OpenAI can't make this an economical product, how is everybody else doing it? And it's actually interesting. I think there's a couple answers. Number one, I think you'll see, like, some of the Chinese models, like Cling and Seed Dance, which is rolling out inside of Cap Cut, right? So like a huge video, the biggest video editor in the world is getting like an AI model built into it. And I think that a lot of these Chinese models have absolutely figured out more efficient ways to run these models. That's just kind of the nature of the game. They, they have all of these like chip export limitations. They don't have as many chips. The Nvidia's kind of chips are getting stifled to ship to China. So I think they actually do figure out how to make these models more efficient. And I think that's probably, probably a really good thing. And then you also have like other American companies like Runway for example. And I recently saw an article about Runway and it is launching a $10 million fund to help fund other startups that are building with AI. So it doesn't feel like they're slowing down. They're kind of going full steam still. But I will say runways like usage of the, of the AI video market is pretty small. I think one of the biggest players right now is Grok Imagine. Apparently their video editor or their video AI tool is one of the, has the most market share, which is interesting. But then there's also Google and Google definitely can afford to burn money. But their VO3 is an amazing model as well for video generation. I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon.
Tyler Redick
Yeah, I mean I really think, I think the biggest thing with OpenAI is the way they positioned Sora as kind of like this fun social media type sharing video. That was kind of the way it was portrayed, especially with when it first launched. It was like you could make yourself eating a pizza with Jake Paul, you know, like, and then we're going to introduce these Disney characters where that's not really something people, you know, when it comes to social media, people want authenticity and it kind of was just kind of a gimmick, if you will. So I think that's maybe a big reason they fell off where some of these other tools like, are more specialized. Like I know there's one called ARC ads. They're specifically for UGC content for brands to be able to, you know, automate UGC. And they're really good at it. Or Google VO3 for example, is I think really great tool for anyone who's doing real video work. Like if you are doing for example real estate videography and you want to start with a pan around the house from a drone and then zoom into the house into the kitchen with like a nice slow mo. It can connect those frames for you. You know, you can choose your aspect ratio. It's just a lot more robust of a tool than the Sora stuck with the, you know, the vertical kind of cheesy video.
Jamie
Yeah. And one thing that I will say about all of that is that they're like video models I don't think are slowing down. There's our friend of the podcast, Logan Kilpatrick. I've interviewed him and had him on my different shows a bunch of times. He was working over at Google. He's a member of the technical staff and he said videos here to stay. Introducing VO 3.1 Lite, our most cost efficient video generation model to date on April 7th. We're also reducing the price for VO 3.1 fast. So it feels like Google isn't really slowing down. Their, their models are, they're, they're releasing cheaper versions, they're releasing new versions. It seems like they're going all in. And so Google definitely could afford to bleed. But I feel like OpenAI must have just had a horribly inefficient architecture for this and I hope that they're not gone. I actually heard a number from one report that every HD 10 second HD video clip you were generating on Sora was costing OpenAI $133.
Ryan
Wow,
Tyler Redick
that's insane.
Jamie
So crazy. I'm like, bro, they should have paid me for all the videos I didn't generate. I could have just sat there regenerating over and over again and racking up a hundred thousand dollar bill like I should be paid for that. But it seems like Google's going all in. And one thing that I do think is funny, I did actually hear this, this one use case from my brother. I believe he always has these like the funny, crazy use cases. And he's like, dude, I love the Sora video model because you can make ring like fake ring camera like videos. I'm like, what? So apparently there's a whole trend of creating fake ring camera videos. And I've seen it, I've actually found it over on X, which is, it makes me laugh because when you watch AI generated video, especially Sora, it wasn't 100%. Like you could generate as many as you wanted on their platform, but they weren't that high quality. But if you made it look like it was a ring camera, then it didn't really matter. And so this one guy, he's got a ring camera or apparently it's like a girl and then she gets pooped on by like a bird. And apparently this got 9 million views in under a week. So people are generating. My brother was telling me, he's like, yeah, I would like always make these like karma videos where like a neighbor was like coming and yelling at the ring camera and then when they're walking away, they would, like, trip and fall in the mud or something and they would get, like, thousands of views. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. I don't really know what the point of these videos are, but people are racking up viral, viral ring camera videos with Sora. One thing I'll say as we are wrapping up this podcast, if you want to try Sora, because it's in April. So, I mean, basically when you're hearing this, it's this month or we're recording on the last day of March in April, Sora is shutting down. You won't be able to use the app. You won't be able to use the platform. It's gone. Every $133 video that you usually are used to making will be gone. But if you want to try it out before it disappears, because also the API is getting deleted. It's on my platform. AI Box AI. If you want to try it out, maybe make yourself a viral ring camera video, go try out AI Box AI. You get access to this, but also all of the different Google models. So even when Sora gets deleted, you can save your prompts and use them on there. So anyways, go check out AI Box if you want to. If you want to get the last taste of Sora before it's officially gone from the Internet. All right, guys, thanks so much for tuning into the podcast. We will catch you all in the next episode. Tyler redick here from 2311 Racing, Victory Lane. Yeah, it's even better. With Chumba by my side. Race to chumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VTW Group void where prohibited by law.
Ryan
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Podcast: AI Hustle: Make Money from AI and ChatGPT, Midjourney, NVIDIA, Anthropic, OpenAI
Hosts: Jaeden Schafer and Jamie McCauley
Date: March 31, 2026
In this episode, Jaeden Schafer and Jamie McCauley dive into the breaking news about OpenAI’s decision to shut down Sora, its much-hyped AI video generation platform. The hosts unpack the financial reasoning behind the move, debate shifting industry dynamics, question Sora’s unique business model, discuss the future of AI video, and speculate on what’s next for OpenAI and the broader AI video landscape.
This episode offers a raw, numbers-driven take on why Sora, once OpenAI’s most ambitious AI video bet, is being scrapped. Despite high-profile deals and initial hype, massive financial losses combined with lackluster user engagement forced OpenAI’s hand. The story underscores how compute costs can break even the flashiest AI products, and sets the stage for a new phase in AI video — one in which operational efficiency, product-market fit, and unique use-cases will decide who wins. The tone is candid, insightful, and often laced with humor, making it a must-listen (or must-read) for anyone tracking the intersection of AI, entrepreneurship, and media.