Alibaba's AI video model rises to No. 2 in global rankings; OpenAI's Sora and ByteDance's Seedance fall away.
OpenAIByteDanceAlibaba Cloud

Alibaba's AI video model rises to No. 2 in global rankings; OpenAI's Sora and ByteDance's Seedance fall away.

Alibaba's AI video model, HappyHorse 1.0, has surged to No. 2 in global rankings, outperforming competitors like Google's Veo-3.1. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Sora and ByteDance's Seedance have struggled, with Sora's operational costs far exceeding its revenue, leading to its shutdown.

CuriousCats Full Story

Alibaba's HappyHorse 1.0 has ascended to the No. 2 position in global AI video model rankings, according to the latest Arena leaderboards. The model achieved a score of 1,444 in both text-to-video and image-to-video categories, surpassing Google's Veo-3.1 by 69 points in text-to-video and xAI's Grok-Imagine-Video by 23 points in image-to-video.12

In contrast, OpenAI's Sora has faced significant challenges, leading to its shutdown. The product was financially unsustainable, costing approximately $1 million per day to operate while generating only $2.1 million in total revenue. Active users plummeted from a peak of nearly 1 million to under 500,000.3

Similarly, ByteDance's Seedance encountered legal issues, with major studios like Netflix and Disney threatening legal action over copyright infringement related to user-generated content. Despite these setbacks, Alibaba's Arena rankings indicate that HappyHorse is outperforming Veo in user-perceived quality, aided by a 40% launch discount on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, making it more cost-effective at scale.4

Pricing for third-party API platforms at the 1.0 level is approximately $1.82 per 10-second clip at 720p and $3.12 at 1080p.

Key Insight
“Alibaba's AI video model has achieved the No. 2 position in global rankings. This rise comes as OpenAI's Sora and ByteDance's Seedance have struggled, with Sora facing financial challenges.”
CuriousCats studied:
1
VentureBeatVentureBeat
“According to , HappyHorse 1.0 now holds the No. 2 position across all three Video Arena leaderboards.”
VentureBeat →
Ask CuriousCats
What is Alibaba's AI video model?
Why did OpenAI's Sora struggle?
How did ByteDance's Seedance perform?
Are other companies competing in video AI?
How does Alibaba's model compare to Sora?
Become the most informed
person in the room.
Personal AI agents scanning 100,000+ sources — news, video, and social media — delivered every morning.
Download the App Go to CuriousCats.ai
🇺🇸 US🇮🇳 India🇬🇧 UK🇨🇦 Canada🇸🇬 Singapore
Liked the depth here?
Get the full internet briefed for you any time of the day.
Get CuriousCats