Last weekend, the global AI community was flooded with two seemingly contradictory news stories:

One: OpenAI completed a $122 billion financing round, with a valuation of $852 billion.

Two: OpenAI shut down Sora, which was launched only 6 months ago.

This is not a sudden decision, but a clear signal of strategic trade-offs—OpenAI is transitioning from a “laboratory that tries everything” to a “platform company focused on high returns,” paving the way for a possible IPO and a long-term computing competition.

One, $122 billion: Sources and uses of funds

First, let's look at the hard data of the financing:

The allocation of these funds is clear: to accelerate the construction of AI infrastructure. OpenAI publicly stated that it aims to maintain its lead “at the scale required by this era,” with the core focus on purchasing more GPUs, building more data centers, and hiring more talent. At the same time, it is implementing a “multi-vendor” strategy for infrastructure—cloud computing does not only rely on Microsoft Azure but also integrates Amazon AWS, Oracle, and Google Cloud; for chips, it is laying out investments in both Nvidia and AMD. This reduces the risk of relying on a single source and prepares for the enormous inference and training loads.

Two, Current Status of OpenAI

Rough estimates indicate that OpenAI currently generates $2 billion in monthly revenue (approximately $24 billion annualized), but it has not yet achieved overall profitability, with significant capital expenditures being the main burden. After financing, its valuation of $852 billion is about 35 times its annualized revenue, and the market has very high expectations for scale effects and future profitability, which also means there is very little room for error.

Looking at operational data shows the logic behind the transition more clearly. OpenAI disclosed that ChatGPT's weekly active users are nearing 1 billion, and the number of paid subscribers exceeds 50 million; revenue from enterprises has increased from about 30% last year to over 40%, indicating a slowdown in consumer growth and an acceleration in the enterprise side. The usage of the search feature has increased nearly threefold year over year, and the advertising pilot generated $100 million in annualized revenue in less than six weeks since its launch. These figures suggest that OpenAI is positioning itself as a platform-level company, akin to Google or Apple, rather than merely an AI tools provider. Operating on both the enterprise and advertising fronts is becoming the new growth engine.

Three, Stopping Sora: It's not that it can't be done, but that it won't be done

The shutdown of Sora represents another side of this logic. On March 24, OpenAI announced that it would cease the Sora consumer application, developer services, and the embedded video feature in ChatGPT, while also terminating a potential $1 billion collaboration with Disney. The product, set to launch by the end of 2025, was positioned as an AI video social platform, allowing users to generate videos and share interactions, but it faded into obscurity within just six months. The direct reason is a poor cost-to-output ratio: the high computing cost (estimated in the millions of dollars daily) did not match the actual usage, with a rapid decline after reaching a peak, making sustainable monetization challenging. A deeper underlying reason lies in strategic focus. After the new application business head Fidji Simo (former Meta application executive) took office, the company pivoted from “experimental projects” to “core monetization.” Consumer entertainment products like Sora clearly conflict with the narrative of “AI super applications + enterprise deployment”—it resembles a “social network without real people” with limited appeal.

Industry insiders pointed out that this is also a reflection of the overall cooling in the AI video sector. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 has been delayed due to engineering and legal issues, with problems regarding intellectual property protection and content regulation remaining unresolved. Hollywood once fantasized about “prompt-based filmmaking,” but the reality has been faced with high costs and low engagement. Some commentators say that the shutdown of Sora serves as “a wake-up call for AI video developers,” but it also reflects OpenAI's decision-making ability of “rapid iteration and timely loss mitigation”—liberating valuable computing resources from low-return projects and redirecting them toward enterprise services, programming tools, and next-generation models (such as the internally codenamed Spud version of GPT-5.5).

Four, Strategic Transformation of OpenAI

The strategic transformation path of OpenAI is clear:

 

• Reduction: eliminate consumer experimental projects like Sora;
• Addition: strengthen ChatGPT search, Codex coding, Agent workflows, and advertising monetization, creating an “AI super application.”

Invest in multi-cloud and multi-chip infrastructure to support inference loads for 900 million users. CEO Sam Altman and his team are clearly preparing for an IPO—individual retail investors entering, ETF layout, high revenue growth, and rising enterprise revenue share all represent a standard narrative. Shutting down Sora also cleans up financial statements and reduces the impression of cash burn.

Five, Conclusion

This round of transformation is not without risks. The $122 billion financing, while alleviating immediate needs, further inflates profitability expectations. OpenAI is still in a phase of heavy investment, with the computing arms race possibly continuing for several years. The AI video sector is unlikely to achieve large-scale commercialization in the short term, and the advantages of frontrunners may not last—Chinese manufacturers, leveraging data and engineering strengths, are quietly accelerating. Ordinary users might find ChatGPT increasingly resembling a “super App,” completing searches, writing, programming, and Agent tasks all in one place; however, developers need to be cautious, as the window for purely consumer entertainment tools is narrowing, with enterprise integration and vertical scenarios being more dependable directions.

For the capital markets, this financing is the latest chapter in the AI boom, but it also reminds everyone: scale does not equal profitability. OpenAI is betting on platform effects eventually generating positive cash flow, but the pressure of execution under high valuation is unprecedented. The end of Sora is not a technical failure but a victory of commercial reality—when resources are limited, prioritizing high-return areas is the path to survival.

In the current context of comprehensive explosion in AI Agents and infrastructure, many institutional investors have begun to focus on the intersection of AI and blockchain—using AI agents to execute trading strategies, participating in DePIN computing power sharing, and even directly investing in next-generation AI infrastructure projects. Gate.io has launched the “Gate for AI” ecosystem, which is a native payment infrastructure aimed at AI Agents, addressing the challenge of autonomous AI payments:

 

• Core Breakthrough: Based on the x402 protocol + a blockchain programmable settlement mechanism, AI can automatically complete API calls, data services, transaction execution, and resource settlement without human intervention, achieving full-process commercial automation from decision-making to execution.
• Key Value: Upgrades AI from “suggestive analysis” to autonomous execution, forming a fully automated closed loop.

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In conclusion, OpenAI's step appears cold but is in fact pragmatic. It is transitioning from a research laboratory pursuing AGI to becoming a platform giant seeking sustainable profit. This is not necessarily a bad thing: only by living long enough can one truly change the world. But it also means that future decisions will be more dominated by business logic.

The future of AI video has not ended; it is just that the timing is not right. When technology, laws, and models truly align, the field may restart—only whether the frontrunner remains OpenAI is now uncertain.

For ordinary investors, the best way to grasp the AI wave may be to look a little further—turning trends into executable strategies in the AI ecosystem of Gate.io.

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