OpenAI in talks to revive Sora through the Katzenberg/Peebles filmmaker startup

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to hand its shelved Sora video model to Jeffrey Katzenberg and Bill Peebles' filmmaker startup for a stake. It is one source, nothing is signed, and nobody knows yet whether the trained model itself would move.

OpenAI may not be done with Sora after all. The company is in talks to hand its shelved video model to a new startup founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Sora research lead Bill Peebles and former Dropbox finance chief Sujay Jaswa, The Information reported on Monday, citing one person familiar with the talks. The startup would get deep enough access to rework the model and sell tools to filmmakers, and OpenAI would take a stake in return.

OpenAI switched off the Sora app in April and cut off developers and studios on September 24. The Wall Street Journal reported the app cost about $1 million a day to run while its users fell from a peak near 1 million to under 500,000, and Disney's $1 billion partnership died with it. A new owner does not make those costs disappear; it changes who pays them and who the product is for.

Nothing is confirmed yet. The startup has no public name, neither company has announced a deal, and it is unclear whether the trained model itself would move. When The Information first reported the company in September, the plan was to train its own video models.

In practice, plan nothing around Sora's return until a deal is announced. If it does come back, it comes back as a new company's product, with its own pricing and its own terms on whose work it learns from, and those terms are the first thing to read.

Source: The Information, Oct 12, 2026; OpenAI Help Center; The Wall Street Journal via TechCrunch.