Google launched Veo 3.1 Lite this week at $0.03 per second — less than half the cost of Veo 3.1 Fast — just days after OpenAI announced it's shutting down Sora entirely. The new tier generates 720p or 1080p videos up to 8 seconds long in landscape or portrait formats, available through Gemini API and Google AI Studio. Google also plans to cut Veo 3.1 Fast pricing starting April 7th.

The timing isn't coincidental. OpenAI killed Sora on March 24th after downloads collapsed 67% in three months and Disney walked away from a reported $1 billion investment. Compute costs made standalone video generation financially unsustainable, even for OpenAI, which is redirecting GPU resources to foundation models. This creates a massive opening Google is clearly trying to fill.

What's striking is how quickly the video generation landscape shifted. Just months ago, Sora was the gold standard everyone compared against. Now developers need migration plans, and Google is aggressively undercutting on price while competitors like Kling AI 3.0 and Runway Gen-4.5 fight for the scraps. The Sora 2 model survives only within ChatGPT Plus — a dramatic downgrade from standalone API access.

For developers, this reinforces a hard lesson about vendor lock-in with AI video models. Google's pricing move is smart but temporary — once they capture Sora refugees, expect costs to creep up. The real winners are aggregation platforms offering multiple video models through single APIs, insulating developers from exactly this kind of disruption.