Sora’s downloads in its first week was almost as massive as ChatGPT’s launch | TechCrunch

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 place on the U.S. App Retailer, it has now, technically, skilled a much bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, in accordance with new information from app intelligence supplier Appfigures. Its estimates present that Sora noticed 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, in contrast with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads throughout its first week.

This isn’t the fairest comparability, nevertheless, as a result of ChatGPT was obtainable solely within the U.S. throughout its first week, whereas Sora is presently provided within the U.S. and Canada at launch. Nonetheless, Appfigures says that Canada contributed about 45,000 installs, so the Sora launch was about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch, if the info had been based mostly on the U.S. numbers solely.

This degree of client adoption is price noting as a result of Sora stays an invite-only app, whereas ChatGPT was extra publicly obtainable at launch. That makes Sora’s efficiency extra spectacular.

Throughout its first day, Sora noticed 56,000 app installs in brief order, bumping the app to change into the No. 3 Prime Total app on the U.S. App Retailer. By Friday, October 3, it reached No. 1. That surge had already put Sora’s debut forward of different main AI app launches, together with Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and put it on par with xAI’s Grok launch.

A fast scan of social media gives loads of anecdotes that assist Appfigures’ information. Sora movies, which makes use of the brand new Sora 2 video mannequin and offers customers the flexibility to generate real looking deepfakes, appear to be in all places. Customers are even creating deepfakes of lifeless folks, a use case that has prompted Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask of us to cease sending her AI-generated photos of her father.

Per Appfigures, the app has seen regular adoption since its first day available on the market, September 30, 2025. Its information signifies that every day downloads on iOS hit a excessive mark of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. It has since seen between lows of 84,400 every day installs (on October 6) and 98,500 every day installs (on October 4).

Whereas that’s not fairly as excessive as earlier within the week, it’s nonetheless first rate numbers for an app that not everybody can but use.