Lights, camera, install. OpenAI’s video app Sora has raced up the charts, pulling off a bigger iOS debut week than ChatGPT, according to Appfigures.
The firm estimates 627,000 iPhone downloads in Sora’s first seven days, edging ChatGPT’s 606,000 in its own opening week.
Shortly after those figures surfaced, Sora head Bill Peebles said the app topped 1 million downloads in under five days. He added it did so while invite-only and iOS only.
Availability helped a touch. ChatGPT launched solely in the U.S., while Sora arrived in the U.S. and Canada. Even so, Canada contributed roughly 45,000 installs, meaning Sora’s U.S. uptake alone was about 96% of ChatGPT’s first-week U.S. tally.
The early momentum was brisk. Sora logged 56,000 installs on day one and reached No. 1 on the U.S. App Store by Friday, 3 October.
Daily downloads peaked at 107,800 on 1 October, then ranged between 84,400 on 6 October and 98,500 on 4 October. That pace outstripped launches for Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and matched the splash made by xAI’s Grok.
Social feeds tell the same story. Clips from the new Sora 2 model are everywhere, including lifelike deepfakes. That has sparked pushback, with Zelda Williams urging people to stop sending AI images of her late father, Robin Williams.