OpenAI is shutting down Sora's API next week while a chinese competitor just raised $3 billion. that's the whole story of ai video right now

Sora launched last september, hit number one in the app store, and had everyone declaring video was solved. the consumer app got killed in april. the API goes dark on the 24th of this month. somewhere in there a roughly billion-dollar Disney licensing deal evaporated with it. Meanwhile Kuaishou's Kling raised up to $3 billion at an $18 billion valuation. and the part that actually matters, they have revenue. something like $95 million in a single quarter, tripled year over year, about 75% from outside china. Synthesia raised at $4 billion in january. Heygen's sitting around $200 million a year. So the pattern isn't "ai video failed." it's that the flashy consumer version failed and the boring business version is printing money. turns out generating a video costs real compute every single time, and people making memes don't pay enough to cover it lol. companies making training videos and product demos do. Some of the tools that survived (argil, kling, synthesia, heygen...) all sell to people with a budget and a repeatable need, not to people who want one cool clip. which is less exciting than "ai makes movies now" but it's where the actual money went. Does this happen to every consumer Al product eventually? feels like the same shape as a lot of the image tools.