November 12th, September 30thOpenAI Official launch of video generation for Apple iOS platform SoraI don't know. Despite the “invite-only” closed-publishing strategy, the application achieved an amazing breakthrough in just one week – a drop of over 1 million times, prompting media sensationalism and the production of large-scale frenzied content: from a fictional security surveillance video, an unprovoked “favourful fart” clip of the late celebrity to a disturbing advertisement on a home shopping channel. According to AppFigures, by Halloween (31 October), Sora downloads had climbed to 4 million times, generating millions of daily 10 seconds AI Video.
So, how much did OpenAI burn on this "massive low-width video surge"? According to Forbes, it is estimated and combined with a number of interviews with professional expertsIts annual cost or over $5 billion (note: the current exchange rate is about 35.601 billion yuan), or an average of about $15 million per day (the current exchange rate is about 170 million yuan)I don't know. On October 30th, Bill Peebles, Project Leader of OpenAI Sora, stated: “The current economic situation is totally unsustainable”。
OpenAI refused to disclose Sora-specific usage data to Forbes and did not comment on its cost estimates。
Free Sora video generation, open to the general public without discrimination, is undoubtedly a big bet -- and it is still radical though it is common in science and technology. OpenAI, at the expense of huge losses, is taking over market shares and users' minds in the future:As use increases, unit costs will decrease significantly; and the income curve is expected to climb steeply when formal fees are charged。
According to Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst of Mizuho, focusing on Meta and Google, “This is the classic Internet-playing approach — initially, not on costs, but on building user base and participation; history has repeatedly shown that businesses can always find a path to turn user sticky into business value.” Walmsley stressed that the GPU calculation minutes required for video generation in units would decline exponentially with technological advances. The cost of video model reasoning is expected to drop to the current level of 1/5 in the next year and to a third in 2027。
At present, this is a greedy market share competition, presumably aimed at paving the way for the future radical commercialization of the product. Although CEO Sam Altman had stated that advertising patterns alone were far from covering Sora's current computing expenses, a sustainable business model could be achieved by combining advertising with high-value professional users (e.g. film directors, television advertisers). In addition, free Sora generation provides valuable training data for OpenAI - text tips (text prompts) entered for unselected users and corresponding video generation can reverse the optimization of all models (current video data are extremely scarce and need to be manually labelled). This either improves the prospects of companies for profit in the future or leads them in model training. Finally, as with all operating expenses, Sora's calculus expenditure can be used as a tax shield - tax efficiency gains by reducing the taxable profits of this newly transformed entity。
However, the speed at which costs have soared has forced OpenAI to adjust its strategy. The company has made it clear that free AI video generation will soon be significantly reduced. As Altman said in October, when he was interviewed by Stratechery: "In the current mass use, a large number of users are simply producing funny engravings and sending them to three or five best friends -- and no advertising mode can sustain the cost of this world."