Forbes’ recent back-of-the-napkin reckoning paints a stark picture: OpenAI may be burning through as much as $15 million every single day to generate short, silly videos for its Sora app. For hardworking Americans watching the tech bubble inflate, that number should set off alarm bells about corporate stewardship and misplaced priorities.
The math behind the headline is simple and ugly. Sora exploded onto iOS at the end of September and reportedly reached roughly 4.5 million downloads by Halloween; analysts then modeled modest user activity — 25 percent of users posting 10 short videos a day — and estimated a cost of about $1.30 to generate a single 10‑second clip, which scales to roughly $15 million a day or more than $5 billion a year. Those aren’t partisan numbers; they’re the arithmetic of an app that’s been handed away for free while compute bills pile up.
This is not the behavior of a prudent company trying to build sustainable value — it’s the behavior of an entity running on investor largesse and reckless optimism. OpenAI itself projected a $20 billion annual run rate even as it reportedly lost upwards of $12 billion in a recent quarter, which makes soaking users in free, compute‑intensive services look like vanity spending rather than a real business plan. Americans who earn their paychecks know the difference between investment and waste; tech executives should be held to the same standard.
Predictably, the bleeding is forcing a pivot to squeeze money out of users: OpenAI now limits free generations and sells extra credits — ten more video generations for about $4 — while Pro users get higher caps but still face practical limits because Sora chews through GPU time. Even Sora’s head, Bill Peebles, has admitted the economics are “completely unsustainable,” which is the plain‑spoken way of saying the current model depends on infinite patience from shareholders. The company’s attempt to monetize after the fact is a clear admission that the free ride can’t last.
Conservatives should call this what it is: subsidized cultural junk. Flooding the internet with algorithmically produced novelty clips and “deepfake” cameos as a way to hoover up data and attention cheapens our cultural commons and risks turning real creators’ livelihoods into collateral damage. The spectacle of burning billions on disposable content while executives hunt for the next viral hit is bad for markets, bad for creators, and bad for a society that values work and accountability.
It’s time investors, corporate boards, and yes — regulators if necessary — started asking hard questions. Microsoft and other backers should demand a path to profitability instead of underwriting an endless free‑for‑all that could leave taxpayers and pensioners holding the bag if the bills come due. America thrives when enterprise is responsible, not when it substitutes flashy experiments for sound business and civic responsibility; let’s insist on leadership that reflects those values.
