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Sora Burned $15M a Day. Made $2.1M Total.
2026.03.30Hey, it's the Carat team. 🤗
The AI video market just got reshuffled over the weekend. Sora's cost data dropped, Siri's ChatGPT monopoly is ending, and one AI photography guide hit 2,400 bookmarks. Here's what happened.
The AI video market just got reshuffled over the weekend. Sora's cost data dropped, Siri's ChatGPT monopoly is ending, and one AI photography guide hit 2,400 bookmarks. Here's what happened.
🔥 Sora Burned $15M a Day. Made $2.1M Total.
Sora officially shut down last week. We covered the news already, but this week the cost data came out — and the scale of the failure is something else.
Daily operating costs ran about $15 million. Four GPUs needed 40 minutes to produce a single 10-second clip, at roughly $1.30 per video. Total revenue after six months? $2.1 million. One day of running Sora cost 7x more than the entire six-month revenue.
Downloads hit 3.3 million at launch, then dropped 66% to 1.1 million in three months. Disney's promised $1 billion investment fell through on March 24. The licensing deal for 200 Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters went with it.
The vacuum is already filling up. Grok Imagine churned out 1.245 billion videos in January alone, taking the #1 spot in traffic. Kling 3.0 is producing 15-second cinematic clips with multi-shot storyboards. Google Veo 3.1 is climbing fast with text-based editing — extending scenes and removing objects with a single prompt, without touching the original footage.
📌 Today's Top 3
1️⃣ 'Hey Siri, Ask Claude' Is About to Work
Bloomberg reports Apple will let third-party AI apps plug into Siri in iOS 27. Until now, ChatGPT was the only AI you could call through Siri. Soon you'll be able to use Claude, Gemini, and others directly.
"Hey Siri, ask Claude about this" will actually work. Apple had an exclusive deal with OpenAI to keep Siri ChatGPT-only, but they're giving users the choice of which AI to use.
2️⃣ 2,400 Bookmarks on One AI Photo Guide
Creative director @AmirMushich (10+ years in the industry) posted an AI image production guide on X that passed 2,400 bookmarks.
The core idea is a token system. Instead of writing long prompts, you combine modular tokens for camera angle, pose, and expression. Swap [FRAMING]=Full Body Shot, [EMOTION]=Fierce Focus, [ANGLE]=Low Angle — and you get consistent, agency-grade results every time. The guide includes 60+ free tokens for building studio backgrounds and placing characters with Nano Banana 2.
Nano Banana 2 is available on Carat. This token system lets you spend less time writing prompts and get way more precise results.
3️⃣ X Is Eating the AI Video Market
While Sora burned $15M a day as a standalone app, Grok Imagine — built right into X — generated 1.245 billion videos in January alone, taking the #1 spot in AI video traffic. Over 314 million visitors.
Sora required a separate download. Grok lives inside X, where hundreds of millions already hang out. On top of that, it offers fast generation, high quality, and low cost — which is why users are flooding in. You can try Grok Imagine for both images and video on Carat.
🧪 Today's Prompt Tip
Turn a Selfie Into a Studio-Quality Headshot
@frametheory058 shared this prompt on X. Upload any casual selfie or snapshot, and it turns into a corporate headshot that looks studio-shot. Job hunting, updating your LinkedIn, or need a company bio photo — copy this and go.
Cinematic, ultra-realistic corporate headshot of the same person from the reference image. Preserve the exact face, skin tone, hair, and identity. Do not alter or smooth the face.
Style: Modern professional executive portrait.
Outfit: Tailored dark navy or charcoal suit jacket, clean white shirt.
Lighting: Soft, even studio lighting with gentle directional shadows for depth.
Background: Clean, minimal dark grey or warm beige gradient blur.
Camera: 85mm portrait lens, f/1.8 aperture, shallow depth of field, tack-sharp focus on the eyes.
Skin: Natural pores and skin texture, zero over-smoothing.
Expression: Confident, calm, and approachable with a slight natural smile.
8K resolution, photorealistic quality.
The key instruction is 'same person from the reference image.' Upload your photo and Nano Banana 2 keeps your face while swapping the lighting, background, and outfit. Adding 'zero over-smoothing' prevents the AI from blurring your skin into plastic.
Here's what we got on Carat with Nano Banana 2. ⬇️
Copy the prompt above and paste it into Nano Banana 2 on Carat with your own photo. You might be surprised by what comes out.
Thanks for reading today. See you tomorrow on Carat. 😊