OpenAI’s Sora soars to No. 3 on the U.S. App Store

OpenAI’s Sora app for AI videos is a viral hit, despite being invite-only for now and limited to users in the U.S. and Canada at launch. On its first day, Sora saw 56,000 downloads, and is now ranked as the No. 3 Top Overall app on the U.S. App Store, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.

The firm estimates Sora’s iOS app pulled in a total of 164,000 installs during its first two days, September 30th and October 1st.

The day-one figure puts Sora’s debut ahead of the performance of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and puts it on par with xAI’s Grok launch. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini iOS apps had somewhat stronger launches, with each reaching at least 80,000 downloads on day one.

Since Sora is still invite-only, this may not be the fairest comparison, we’ll admit. It’s possible the new video app could have attracted even more installs if it were open to all users.

Despite this restriction, it’s a fairly strong showing for the new release, indicating demand for AI video tools in consumers’ hands in more of a social networking-like experience. (This is much to the chagrin of some at OpenAI, who want the company to focus on solving harder problems that benefit humanity. But who’s to say that humanity isn’t benefiting from deepfakes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asking, “Are my piggies enjoying their slop?”)

To compare Sora’s early success to other AI apps, Appfigures had to run an analysis that only looked at the other AI apps’ U.S. and Canadian downloads. That’s because the different AI apps on the market have pursued different launch strategies. For instance, ChatGPT initially launched on iOS and limited itself to U.S. users at the time, while Grok limited its iOS-only release to the U.S., Australia, and India. Anthropic, meanwhile, didn’t indicate there were geographic restrictions when it first brought its Claude app to iOS last year.

For a more of an apples-to-apples comparison, Appfigures crunched the numbers to focus only on each app’s U.S. downloads, plus those in Canada, if the app had been available there at launch.

It found that ChatGPT and Gemini had larger launches than Sora, with 81,000 and 80,000 day-one iOS downloads, respectively. Sora tied with Grok for day-one installs, at 56,000. And it easily beat out the launches from AI apps Claude and Copilot. The former pulled in 21,000 day-one downloads, while the latter only saw 7,000.

Sora also hit the U.S. App Store’s top charts, becoming the No. 3 overall top app by day two. For comparison, ChatGPT reached No. 1 on its second day, while Grok was No. 4, Gemini was No. 6, Copilot was No. 19, and Claude was No. 78.