OpenAI’s Sora soars to number 3 in downloads on App Store

OpenAI’s newly launched Sora app has stormed into the App Store’s top three downloads, securing the No. 3 spot within days of release — but Google’s Gemini continues to dominate thanks to the runaway success of its Nano Banana image model.

Launched on 30 September as an invite-only platform, Sora is built on a revamped version of OpenAI’s original video-generation model. According to AppFigures, the app logged 56,000 U.S. downloads on its first day and 108,000 on its second — numbers comparable to the debut of Elon Musk’s xAI Grok, though still behind the day-one performance of ChatGPT and Gemini, both of which topped 80,000 installs.

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The rapid rise underscores that, despite talk of “AI fatigue,” consumer demand remains strong — particularly for multimodal apps built around visuals and social experiences rather than text alone.

Gemini’s continued dominance is fuelled by the virality of Nano Banana, known for generating images that closely mirror reference shots. OpenAI is pitching Sora as a social-meets-cinematic video app, designed to replicate that same pull. However, its launch has already attracted controversy, from trademark disputes to criticism over AI-generated “slop.”

While Musk wages legal battles with Apple and OpenAI over Grok’s weak adoption, industry watchers say the real takeaway is clear: consumers are gravitating toward AI products that combine creativity, video, and image-based interaction.

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