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This week, OpenAI went on a killing spree. Not the AI apocalypse kind. The corporate housecleaning kind. Three major products got axed or shelved in the span of five days. And the reason why tells you everything about where the AI industry is heading right now.

Let's get into it.

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On Tuesday, March 24, OpenAI quietly deprioritized Instant Checkout, the feature that was supposed to turn ChatGPT into a shopping portal. The same day, they announced that they are shutting down Sora, their standalone AI video app. Then on Thursday, it was reported that ChatGPT's planned adult mode has been shelved indefinitely.

Three products in five days.

What Happened to Sora

Sora launched as a standalone app in September 2025 and immediately rocketed to the top of the App Store. The underlying tech was legitimately impressive. Sora 2 could generate realistic video with audio from text prompts, and users went wild with it.

Too wild, actually. Deepfakes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robin Williams popped up almost immediately, prompting both of their daughters to publicly ask people to stop. Users made videos of Sam Altman stealing Nvidia chips from Target. Then they moved on to copyrighted characters. Mario smoking weed. Pikachu doing ASMR.

In a twist nobody expected, Disney didn't sue. Instead, they signed a three-year licensing deal and pledged a $1 billion investment in OpenAI, giving Sora access to over 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters.

But the numbers told a different story.

Sora peaked at about 3.3 million downloads in November. By February, that had dropped to 1.1 million. Lifetime revenue from in-app purchases totaled roughly $2.1 million. For a company valued at $840 billion, that's a rounding error.

OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar was blunt about it on CNBC: "We're having to make those really difficult decisions. We're facing a lack of compute."

The Sora team's own head had said last November that OpenAI's GPUs were "melting" from usage.

With Sora gone, the Disney deal is dead. Disney put out a statement saying they "respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business.”

The Adult Mode That Never Was

ChatGPT's "adult mode" has had a rough life. CEO Sam Altman first floated the idea in October, saying he wanted ChatGPT to treat adult users like adults and offer erotica for verified users.

It was supposed to launch in December. Then it got delayed. Then delayed again in early March. Now it's been paused indefinitely.

The internal resistance was fierce. OpenAI's own wellness advisors warned that the company could end up building a sexy suicide coach. Employees raised concerns about users developing unhealthy emotional attachments to the chatbot.

The investor reaction wasn't great either. And the age verification problem was never solved.

How do you reliably confirm someone is over 18 through a chat interface?

The Shopping Experiment That Flopped

Instant Checkout launched in September as well, letting users buy products from retailers like Etsy, Walmart, and Shopify directly inside ChatGPT. OpenAI called it the next step in agentic commerce.

Users disagreed. Adoption was minimal. OpenAI couldn't solve basic problems like multi-item carts, loyalty program integration, or sales tax compliance across thousands of U.S. jurisdictions.

The company admitted the feature did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide. They're pivoting to product discovery instead, essentially turning ChatGPT into a comparison shopping tool rather than a checkout terminal.

Why Now

OpenAI's CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, told employees in an all-hands meeting that the company needed to stop being distracted by side quests. Sam Altman and Chief Research Officer Mark Chen were actively reviewing which projects to cut.

Simo described Anthropic's growth as a wake-up call and told employees the company was "very much acting as if it's a code red."

While OpenAI was launching video apps, web browsers, hardware devices, and shopping features, Anthropic stayed focused on two things: coding tools and enterprise customers. It worked.

Anthropic's Claude Code alone is generating over $2.5 billion in annualized revenue. The company closed a $30 billion funding round in February at a $380 billion valuation.

OpenAI still dominates consumer AI with 900 million weekly active users on ChatGPT. But roughly 85% of those users pay nothing. Anthropic is eating OpenAI's lunch in the enterprise market, which is where the real money lives.

And OpenAI needs that money. The company raised $120 billion in its latest funding round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation. It's burning cash at an extraordinary rate and is eyeing an IPO as soon as Q4 2026. Wall Street wants to see recurring enterprise revenue, not viral video apps that lose money.

The Bottom Line

OpenAI spent 2025 trying to be everything at once: a social media platform, a shopping mall, an adult entertainment provider, and a video studio. None of it worked. Now they're rushing to become what Anthropic already is: a focused enterprise AI company.

The company that defined consumer AI is admitting that consumers alone can't pay the bills. The real question is whether OpenAI can close the gap fast enough before its IPO, or whether Anthropic has already locked up the customers that matter most.

Category: Strategic Analysis

"I'm evaluating whether to continue or kill a product/feature at my company. Here's the context: [describe the product, its performance metrics, resource costs, and strategic fit]. Help me build a structured kill/keep framework. Consider: opportunity cost of resources, alignment with core business strategy, competitive positioning, and what signals I should use to make the final call. Present the analysis as a clear recommendation with supporting reasoning."

OpenAI's product graveyard is a reminder that in AI, doing more isn't the same as doing better. The companies that win this race won't be the ones with the longest feature list. They'll be the ones that figured out what to say no to. Sometimes the hardest strategic move is admitting you were wrong and cutting your losses.

Hit reply, I read every response.

See you in the next one.

— Vivek

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