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[Draugoth]

On September 30, OpenAI debuted its Sora video creation app for Apple's iOS platform racking up a stunning 1 million downloads in a week despite an invitation-only rollout, inspiring a swoon of fawning coverage and vast slop of fantastical Ring security videos, gratuitously farting celebrities (deceased only), and some truly disturbing home shopping network ads. By Halloween the app had been downloaded 4 million times, per AppFigures, and was churning out millions of 10-second AI-generated videos per day.

So just how much money is OpenAI dumping on this firehose of imbecilic video? More than $5 billion annualized, or around $15 million per day, according to Forbes estimates and conversations with experts. When Bill Peebles, OpenAI's head of Sora, observed on October 30 that "The economics are currently completely unsustainable," he was right on the money.

These numbers bear some explanation and come with a handful of caveats. OpenAI declined to share specific usage data on Sora and to comment on Forbes' estimates. That means Forbes' calculations rely on estimates and several moving targets—including GPU prices, inference efficiency, user counts and the number of videos being posted per day.

Article:

OpenAI Could Be Blowing As Much As $15 Million Per Day On Silly Sora Videos

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2025/11/09/openai-spending-ai-generated-sora-videos/

 

[newtypepilot]

 

[consoul]

This is how confident they are of turning their stolen not-for-profit into an endless money making machine.

 

[T-0800]

They want to sell a monthly subscription so that people can make silly videos.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

They want to sell a monthly subscription so that people can make silly videos.

Millions of startups are doing it as well already, they are still not breaking even. Subscriptions will not solve the issue.

 

[ZehDon]

They need corporate infrastructure money - the kind you get when companies fire all of their employees and replace them with your AI powered workers - to keep the money printing machine running.
I suspect the next big breakthrough will be efficient gains to get the cost per compute cycle down to sustainable levels.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

We need 1 trillion dollars to save the planet, thank you.

 

[AJUMP23]

What cost so much? Is it the Electricity or processors. I do not know how it could cost that much.

 

[Kenneth Haight]

Is it the Electricity or processors

 

[AJUMP23]

But wouldn't a processor be a one time purchase or does AI video generation burn them up? So you have to keep buying them.

 

[Zathalus]

But wouldn't a processor be a one time purchase or does AI video generation burn them up? So you have to keep buying them.

They have to keep scaling compute power to deal with increased generation prompts, more demanding models to run, as well as training the newer models. It's a vicious cycle at the moment, you need more compute to train more advanced models, those more advanced models require more compute to run, you need a newer model, and so on. Hence, them purchasing more and more GPUs and having millions of them requires a shit ton of energy.

Some do die, as all electronics do, but no more than the norm.

 

[dem]

I've been playing around with the meta.ai app to make videos.

They don't take very long to generate, and you can seemingly generate as many as you want for free.

The amount of energy/money being wasted is fucking astronomical.

"Generating a five-second AI video can use electricity equivalent to running a microwave for over an hour"

 

[DeepEnigma]

From laundering in the physical art/Hollywood space, to now digital.

 

[Trogdor1123]

The facts about the AI bubble are terrifying. Ai is pretty great but the fiscal model doesn't match the insane costs

 

[SlimySnake]

I need an AI robot to clean my house and blow me daily. I couldnt care less about AI memes or even AI porn.

 

[Wildebeest]

They are right that there is going to be an employment crisis but because the markets are going to crash and not because an impossible AGI will suddenly emerge and will do everything. Where we live in some absurd post scarcity society where people can't actually afford to live and all the surplus is just thrown away or wasted, which everyone would roll over and accept because they just respect wealth so much. I mean, you have to be pretty dumb to believe that.

 

[EverydayBeast]

What's the difference between animation and these creations? Animations like Toy Story have been around for years, every AI creation I see is poor quality.

 

[P:axMagellanic]

All this energy and cash burnt to create what is overwhelmingly dogshit. Madness.

 

[falconhoof]

This is another dot com bubble. We'll get to the other side, there will be progress made, but the cost of getting there will be massive losses to most investment.

It's fair to say now that chat model AI isn't going away. People are hooked in one form or another, so it'd be regression to pull the plug on it all, but this hyper capitalistic model of spending billions feels like a throw shit at the wall and see what sticks approach, just done by someone who calls themselves an "expert" on LinkedIn to make it look strategic.

I don't imagine there's any effort in making something like Sora profitable, the goal is to get them hooked. Profitability is sold to investors as a solvable problem, with all these users you just show a conversion chart and a magic number looks like potential earnings. The likely hood is by enshitification through ads and neutered offerings, all done with as little competition as possible because other couldn't raise as many billions as it took for OpenAI to build its moat.

 

[Haint]

I've been playing around with the meta.ai app to make videos.

They don't take very long to generate, and you can seemingly generate as many as you want for free.

The amount of energy/money being wasted is fucking astronomical.

"Generating a five-second AI video can use electricity equivalent to running a microwave for over an hour"

A 5090 takes about 2 minutes to generate a 5 second 720p video, consuming an average of about 400 watts over that time (it's not pegged at 100% tdp the entire time).