Correction, 2026-10-01: an earlier version of this page said OpenAI never published what happens to Sora content. It did: its Help Center says that after Sora is discontinued and any final export window passes, data associated with your use of Sora is permanently deleted. We also described Bending Spoons as having "a documented history of restricting free tiers" without a source we could read, and wrote as if Sora's shutdown were still twelve days away. Those lines are fixed and the outside facts now carry sources.
Two things happened in September 2026: OpenAI's Sora API reached its shutdown date on September 24, after the consumer app had already closed in April, and Miro agreed to be acquired by Bending Spoons, which also owns Evernote, Vimeo and WeTransfer. Neither is a crisis. Both are the same reminder, which is that the question to ask about a creative tool is not what it makes but what you get out, and almost nobody asks it before adopting.
The one habit that matters
Export at the end of every project, not at the end of a tool.
Everything else on this page is detail. A twenty-minute pass when a project closes (finals, sources, and the working files, into storage you control) means no shutdown, acquisition, or price change is ever an emergency. Teams that do this treat vendor news as a procurement question. Teams that do not treat it as a fire drill, which is what a shutdown date followed by a deletion clause becomes.
What to export, in priority order
1. Finals. The assets that shipped. Obvious, and still the thing people assume is safe because it is "in the tool."
2. Sources. Original capture, uploaded reference images, the raw files everything derived from. Irreplaceable in a way finals are not.
3. Prompts and reference sets, for generated work. This is the one people miss. For a generated asset, the prompt plus the reference images is the source file, in the same way a RAW file is for a photograph. Export the outputs without them and you have pictures you can never make another version of. See how to organize creative assets.
4. Model and settings. Which model, what duration, what resolution. Matching an old asset later is much harder without them.
5. The decisions. Briefs, approved boards, feedback threads. Worth less individually and it is the institutional memory that makes the next project faster.
Which formats survive
Safe: JPEG, PNG, MP4, WAV, PDF, plain text, CSV. Boring formats outlive the companies that wrote them.
Conditionally safe: layered files and project files, which open only in the software that made them. Fine as an archive, useless if that software is what went away.
Not safe: anything that exists only as a link into someone's platform. A board you can only view by logging in is not an archive, and neither is a share URL. Sora's API is the clearest case: OpenAI's own guide said download links were valid for a maximum of one hour after generation, so anything a product kept as a link rather than a file was gone long before the shutdown.
The test: if the company vanished overnight, could you still open this in five years? If the answer needs their servers, it is not archived.
The questions to ask before adopting
Ask them at evaluation, when the vendor is motivated to answer:
Can I export everything, in bulk, in standard formats? Not one file at a time. Bulk.
What happens to my content if I stop paying? Read-only access, deletion, or a reactivation fee are all possible answers, and you want to know which one applies before you depend on the tool.
Is there a documented data-retention policy? Sora is instructive here. OpenAI did publish one: after the app's discontinuation and any final export window, the data is permanently deleted, with an email if a final export window is offered. A clear answer, and also the reason to ask early: by the time a shutdown is announced, the answer may already be a deletion date.
Who owns the output, and does that survive account closure?
What is the notice period for a material change? OpenAI announced the Sora API deprecation on 2026-03-24 for a 2026-09-24 shutdown, six months. Write down what your vendor commits to.
A vendor who answers these crisply is telling you something real about how they operate. A vendor who cannot is telling you something too.
Our own answer, since we are asking
It would be dishonest to publish this checklist without applying it to ourselves.
Per-asset download: yes. Every generated and uploaded file can be downloaded individually. Images from the models we have measured download as PNG (with smaller WebP sizes offered alongside), and generated video as MP4 (H.264), the file the model returned, not a re-encode.
Bulk board export: no, we do not have it. You cannot currently export a whole canvas in one action. That is a real gap against the checklist above and it is on us to close rather than to phrase around.
Ownership: output from paid plans is cleared for commercial use.
Plans: The canvas is free and unlimited; generation is paid from $19/month.
If bulk export matters to your procurement decision today, that is a legitimate reason to weigh us down, and we would rather you knew before adopting than after.
What not to do
Do not panic-migrate on an announcement. Miro says that "until closing, nothing changes in how we operate", and Bending Spoons expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval. Moving a working team in a week costs more than any plausible price rise. See Miro acquired by Bending Spoons.
Do not assume "the files are in the cloud" is a backup. It is someone else's computer, under terms they can change.
Do not archive only the finals. Prompts and sources are what let you make version two.
FAQ
How often should we export? At project close, every time. Continuous backup of working files is overkill; an archive pass at the end is not.
What if a tool has no bulk export? Factor it into the decision, and export per project so the manual cost stays small. A tool without bulk export is not disqualified, it is a known cost.
Is a screenshot of a board an archive? It preserves the arrangement and nothing you can edit. Better than nothing for reference boards, useless for working files.
What happened to Sora content? OpenAI's Help Center says data associated with your use of Sora is permanently deleted after the discontinuation and any final export window. Details by kind of user are in what happens to your Sora videos after Sept 24.
Sources
- Sora app and API dates, export and data deletion: OpenAI Help Center, What to know about the Sora discontinuation, live page blocked to automated reading; read via the Internet Archive copy of 2026-09-19, checked 2026-10-01
- Sora API notice date and shutdown date: OpenAI API deprecations, checked 2026-10-01
- Sora download-link validity: OpenAI video generation guide (archived by OpenAI), checked 2026-10-01
- Miro deal terms and expected closing: Bending Spoons newsroom, 2026-09-10, checked 2026-10-01
- "Until closing, nothing changes": Miro blog, Miro + Bending Spoons, checked 2026-10-01
- Bending Spoons portfolio (Evernote, Vimeo, WeTransfer): bendingspoons.com, checked 2026-10-01
- 8frame download formats: 8frame media pipeline and production files, read 2026-09-30
The question is never what a tool generates. It is what you carry out when you leave.
Try it without signing up: the 8frame canvas opens on a real board. The canvas is free and unlimited; generation is paid from $19/month.