OpenAI has officially announced the world's first country where all citizens can use ChatGPT Plus for free.

OpenAI has reached the world's first national - level cooperation with the Maltese government: After all citizens complete an AI literacy course, they can use ChatGPT Plus for free for one year. A small European country with a population of less than 550,000 is turning the slogan of "universal AI popularization" into an executable policy sample - and OpenAI's ambition goes far beyond selling a few more subscriptions.

OpenAI officially announced a partnership with the Maltese government, providing all Maltese citizens with access to ChatGPT Plus for one year, with the cost borne by the state!

https://openai.com/index/malta-chatgpt-plus-partnership/

This is the world's first AI tool popularization plan covering all citizens at the national level.

Take the course first, then use AI

The Maltese plan has a threshold design: Citizens must first complete an AI literacy course developed by the University of Malta, covering the basic principles of AI, its ability boundaries, and the responsible use methods in family and work scenarios.

Only after completing the course can citizens obtain a one - year free usage qualification for ChatGPT Plus.

The first batch of users will start accessing in May, and the distribution will be handled by the Maltese Digital Innovation Authority, gradually covering Maltese citizens overseas later.

This path of "education first, then tools" is worth noting.

Most countries' AI policies stay at the regulatory level - introducing bills, setting up ethics committees, and restricting data use.

Malta directly puts the tools in the hands of citizens, but ensures that they know how to use them before that.

What does OpenAI really want?

On the surface, this is a source of subscription revenue.

Malta has a population of 574,300. Even if all citizens subscribe to ChatGPT Plus (with a monthly fee of $20), the annual total cost is about $130 million - not a large amount for OpenAI. The real rewards lie elsewhere.

Firstly, user scale.

Sam Altman repeatedly compares intelligence to electricity, and OpenAI's official blog also uses the term "global public utility" again in this statement.

The business logic of public utilities is that scale determines everything.

ChatGPT currently has more than 900 million weekly active users, but flagship closed - source models like Claude, Gemini, Grok and various open - source models are rapidly diverting the market.

Acquiring customers in batches through government channels is an efficient way to capture users' minds.

For a person who has never used AI before, the first tool they come into contact with is likely to become their long - term choice.

Secondly, the data flywheel.

More users mean more real - world interaction data, which directly feeds back into model training and product iteration.

Every question users ask on ChatGPT, every correction they make, and every usage scenario all help OpenAI understand the distribution of human needs.

For a company aiming for AGI and even ASI in the long term, the value of data diversity is extremely high.

The question - asking patterns of Maltese teachers, fishermen, and civil servants are completely different from those of Silicon Valley engineers - this is exactly the training signal needed for the model to become more general.

Thirdly, the demonstration effect.

When OpenAI needs to promote cooperation plans to more countries, "We have helped multiple countries achieve universal AI popularization" is the most persuasive reference.

Malta is the showcase, and the real target customers are medium - sized countries still on the sidelines.

George Osborne, the former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and current head of OpenAI for Countries, said in the statement: "Intelligence is becoming a national public utility... Malta has taken the lead, and we hope other countries will follow."

What - sized countries can replicate this?

The financial feasibility of the Maltese plan highly depends on the population size.

Doing a rough calculation: At a cost of $240 per person per year for ChatGPT Plus, the full - coverage cost for a country with a population of 1 million is about $240 million, about $1.2 billion for 5 million, and nearly $2.4 billion for 10 million.

In reality, not all citizens will complete the course and activate their accounts.

Assuming the actual activation rate is between 30% - 50%, countries with a population of less than 5 million - such as Estonia (1.363 million), Singapore (6.11 million), Luxembourg (682,000), and Iceland (392,000) - can financially absorb this expenditure.

OpenAI is currently promoting cooperation in the education system in Estonia and Greece, and these countries are the most likely to follow in the first wave.

For countries with a population in the tens of millions, the model of the government paying the full bill will face obvious budget pressure.

Take Portugal (with a population of 11 million) as an example. Even with a 30% activation rate, the annual cost will be nearly $800 million - for an economy with a GDP of about $290 billion, this budget requires full public discussion and demonstration.

In the context of larger economies, India has a population of 1.46 billion. Even if only 10% are covered, it means an annual expenditure of more than $35 billion.

This figure already exceeds India's annual education budget (the budget for the 2026 - 2027 fiscal year is about $16.8 billion).

For large - population countries, the path of "the state pays for all citizens" is difficult to be financially viable. A more realistic approach may be for the government to subsidize specific groups (teachers, civil servants, college students, etc.) or negotiate a national license agreement with significant discounts with AI companies.

A race of "who lays the infrastructure first"

The underlying logic of the Maltese project is similar to the story of countries laying power grids and telephone networks more than a hundred years ago: Once the infrastructure is laid, it is extremely costly for later - comers to replace it.

OpenAI's strategy is that when AI becomes a daily basic tool, the first platform to cover users will gain an operating - system - level stickiness.

The real question to be tested in this experiment is: Is the bottleneck of AI popularization the accessibility of tools or the ability to use them?

If Maltese citizens abandon using the tool in large numbers after completing the course, it means the lack of demand scenarios;

If the usage rate continues to rise, OpenAI will have a strong case to promote to more countries.

For those interested in this field, there is an indicator worth continuously tracking: the monthly active user retention rate six months after the launch of the Maltese project.

This figure will determine whether "the state pays for all citizens' AI use" is a replicable public - service innovation or an expensive marketing campaign.

Reference materials:  

https://openai.com/index/malta-chatgpt-plus-partnership/ 

This article is from the WeChat official account "New Intelligence Yuan", author: New Intelligence Yuan. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.