OpenAI explains how it plans to start making money from Sora users (www.businessinsider.com)

OpenAI is beginning to monetize Sora by selling extra video generations: users can buy 10 additional videos for $4 on top of the app’s current free cap of 30 generations per day. Pro users retain a higher ceiling (up to 100 videos/day, though heavy “more expensive” configs can lower that cap), and OpenAI says the new option is a response to “power users” driving unsustainable compute costs. Sora — powered by the Sora 2 model and now a top-2 app on Apple’s App Store — recently added cameo-style characters for pets/objects and temporarily opened US/Canada signups without invites. The move is significant because it highlights the economics of high-throughput multimodal AI: video generation is compute-intensive, and providers are moving from unlimited free access toward paid or throttled models to manage GPU supply and cost. For the AI/ML community this sets a precedent for how consumer-facing generative tools will be priced and provisioned, affects creators who rely on high-volume generation, and signals tougher tradeoffs between accessibility and sustainability. OpenAI’s problems are not only cost-related: Sora faces IP and policy friction (a naming lawsuit from Cameo and tightened content rules), and leadership stresses transparency and addiction-safety design as usage scales.