Disney Invests $1 Billion in OpenAI, Licenses Characters for Sora Video Platform

Dec 12, 2025
Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and allow over 200 of its characters to appear in Sora-generated videos under a three-year licensing agreement, with user-created clips to be streamed on Disney+.

Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license more than 200 of its characters for use in the Sora app, announced in a press release. The three-year agreement makes Disney the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative video platform.

The deal allows users to generate user-prompted social videos featuring characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. A curated selection of these fan-created videos will be available for streaming on Disney+. The agreement excludes any talent likenesses or voices.

As part of the partnership, Disney will also become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to develop new products and tools, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT internally for employees. The companies said the collaboration will focus on responsible use of AI and maintaining safeguards to protect creators’ rights.

Sora and ChatGPT Images are expected to begin generating fan-inspired content with Disney’s licensed characters in early 2026, according to the announcement.

We hope you enjoyed this article

Consider subscribing to one of our newsletters like AI Funding Brief, Enterprise AI Brief or Daily AI Brief.

Also, consider following us on social media:

AI Funding News Enterprise AI AI Brief AI Brief (X)
Free newsletter

Enterprise AI Brief

Weekly report on AI business applications, enterprise software releases, automation tools, and industry implementations.

AI Token Webinar

Whitepaper

Tensordyne Napier: What If One Rack Could Do the Work of Nine?

Tensordyne

This Tensordyne whitepaper presents Napier, an inference-focused AI processor and rack-scale system based on the company’s TDN Math logarithmic number system. It examines infrastructure requirements for large mixture-of-experts and agentic models, compares major inference architecture approaches, and details the TDN AIP processor, TDN72 pod, TDN Link fabric, and Napier Ultra configuration. The paper reports simulation-based performance, cost, and accuracy-validation results, including Tensordyne’s projected comparison of one Napier rack with a nine-rack Nvidia Rubin plus Groq deployment; the chip is reported as taped out and in fabrication.

Read more

You may also like

Free, six days a week

Daily AI Brief: the AI news that matters, in your inbox.