The Sora shutdown is official — OpenAI killed its video AI even after Disney put $1B on the table. Anthropic is winning without video, images, or any of it. So why was OpenAI doing it at all?

OpenAI just raised $110 billion and still couldn't keep Sora alive. Hunter and Daniel rip into the Sora shutdown, the three competing theories about why OpenAI pulled the plug, and what it means for the Anthropic vs OpenAI battle that's reshaping the entire AI industry. Anthropic subscriptions reportedly climbed 5% in February while OpenAI posted its biggest subscriber decline ever tracked — and Anthropic doesn't even do video. The "everything app" strategy is looking more like a liability than an advantage.

On the video side: generating top-tier AI video still costs $8–10 per minute, but open-weight models like LTX 2.3 are closing the gap fast. Hunter actually got one running locally on his MacBook by turning Codex loose in full YOLO mode — left the room, came back, had a rendered video and a slightly broken computer. Now that Sora is gone, who takes the AI video crown? Google's Veo 3 is the obvious frontrunner (and they're already plugging it into their ad network). But Grok is the dark horse nobody's watching — cheap, fast, and getting better multiple times a month.

Daniel drops an official 2025 prediction: Disney will partner with Google for AI video by year's end. The logic? If people are already generating Mickey Mouse Ring camera videos with open-weight models, Disney might as well get paid for it. This leads to a genuinely unresolved argument about whether user-generated AI content with brand imagery counts as advertising. Hunter says yes. Daniel says absolutely not. Things mean things, Hunter.

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 Gary vs. the Payphone (Cold Open)
1:36 Your $200/Month AI Plan Is Subsidized Cope
3:14 AI Video Costs $10/Min — We Have the Receipts
5:54 "I'm Going All In on Sora" (About That...)
7:49 Why OpenAI Actually Killed Sora
10:37 Anthropic Is Winning Without Video or Images
12:33 The Video AI Power Vacuum: Veo 3, Grok, Runway
15:23 Disney's $1B Partner Just Died — Now What?
20:04 Is AI-Generated Mickey Mouse an Ad?

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