OpenAI’s Sora soars to No. 3 on the U.S. App Store (techcrunch.com)

OpenAI’s new video-centric app Sora exploded onto the iOS scene during its invite-only U.S./Canada launch, drawing roughly 56,000 downloads on day one and an estimated 164,000 installs across its first two days (Sept. 30–Oct. 1), according to Appfigures. That surge pushed Sora to No. 3 on the U.S. App Store by day two. Appfigures’ apples‑to‑apples comparison of U.S./Canada downloads puts Sora on par with xAI’s Grok (56k day one), ahead of Anthropic’s Claude (21k) and Microsoft Copilot (7k), but behind ChatGPT (81k) and Google Gemini (80k) on launch day. The app remains invite‑only, so its traction is notable given the constrained rollout. For the AI/ML community, Sora’s rapid adoption underscores strong consumer demand for generative video and multimodal, social-style AI experiences—areas that require heavy compute, robust content moderation, and sophisticated safety guardrails. The viral momentum highlights both commercial opportunity and risk: high engagement potential for new multimodal models, but also amplification of deepfake and disinformation concerns (exemplified by quickly circulating spoof clips). Appfigures’ region-limited analysis also illustrates how differing geographic rollouts complicate launch comparisons, and suggests Sora could have scaled even faster if opened broadly.