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Disney cancels $1 billion OpenAI partnership amid Sora shutdown plans
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
275 points (99.6% liked)
Fuck AI
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See, this is why openai can never go public: if it has to open its books, the music stops.
Disney does not have the luxury of teasing its investors with billion dollar deals-- every quarter, they have to report where they're stacking their chips, and any cute shit will get them sued and investigated at a minimum. They probably expect their peers to meet them halfway on that.
Openai is not a serious company. When a major prospective partner like fucking Disney wants to open a billion dollar account, what possible excuses could a real company have for not figuring it out?
I would like to argue that when a company reaches a certain equity value, it should not have the option of closed books. if the government is going to treat a company as "too big to fail", then it's "too big for privacy"
They are spinning this as some sort of "nah, we decided we didn't want a billion dollars cause we're doing something else instead."
But as you said, that is horseshit, no one leaves a billion dollars on the table.
I bet the reason is that Disney got a peak at the actual capabilities and were like "this is garbage, why would be pay a billion dollars for something that isn't any better than the janky shit that goes on youtube?"