OpenAI deploys unconventional measure amid slowing user growth. Paid users increase by 570,000. Distributes ChatGPT Plus paid plan accounts to all citizens of the Republic of Malta.

On May 16, 2026, OpenAI announced a partnership with the government of the Republic of Malta to provide its paid "ChatGPT Plus" plan free of charge for one year to all citizens and residents (approximately 570,000 people) who complete an AI literacy course. It is the world's first such initiative at a national scale, and a move made against the headwind of failing to meet internal targets for weekly active users and revenue. Drawing on Malta's past—the collapse of its "Blockchain Island" vision and its placement on the FATF gray list—this article thoroughly examines, from the perspective of Silicon Valley venture capital (VC), whether this "unconventional gambit" represents staking out market territory or merely manufacturing numbers ahead of an IPO.

Abstract

On May 16, 2026, OpenAI announced a partnership with the government of the Republic of Malta to provide a one-year free subscription to its paid plan "ChatGPT Plus" to all citizens and residents (approximately 570,000 people) who complete an AI literacy course. This is the world's first attempt on a national scale, a move played against the headwinds of falling short of internal targets for weekly active users and revenue. Drawing on Malta's past—the failure of its "Blockchain Island" vision and its placement on the FATF gray list—this article thoroughly examines, from the perspective of Silicon Valley venture capital (VC), whether this "unconventional gambit" represents a land grab for market position, or merely number-padding ahead of an IPO.

"ChatGPT Plus for All Citizens" — An Overview of Malta's Initiative

On May 16, 2026, OpenAI and the government of the Republic of Malta announced a partnership to provide ChatGPT Plus free of charge to all citizens and residents of Malta. OpenAI has positioned this as "the first partnership of its kind at a national scale anywhere in the world." A single company's subscription, on a scale roughly equal to the population of an entire sovereign state, is being moved by a single contract — that is the outline of this initiative.

Eligible recipients are Maltese citizens and residents of Malta, including the Maltese diaspora living abroad. OpenAI and the Maltese government put the target population at approximately 574,000, though some outlets report a figure of around 540,000 to 550,000. The crucial point is that what is being provided is not the free version of ChatGPT but ChatGPT Plus, the higher-tier plan that would normally require payment. There is one condition for receiving it: completing "AI for All," an AI literacy course developed by the University of Malta, and passing identity verification using Malta's national digital ID (eID). The course is a free online program covering "what AI is, what it can and cannot do, and how to use it responsibly at home and at work," and upon completion users are granted 12 months of ChatGPT Plus. Distribution will be operationally handled by the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA), with Phase 1 launching in May 2026 and the program designed to expand in stages as more people complete the course.

It is worth noting the financial figures. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month in the United States (about ¥3,180), roughly €23 per month in Europe (about ¥4,300), or about €276 per year (about ¥51,000) (yen conversions in this article use the mid-May 2026 rates of approximately ¥159 to the dollar and ¥185 to the euro). The Maltese government is reported to have launched this initiative alongside an investment package totaling €100 million (about ¥18.5 billion) directed at digitalization and related technologies. Economy Minister Silvio Schembri stated that the program will "turn an unfamiliar concept into practical help for families, students, and workers," while Deputy Prime Minister Ian Borg said, "We don't want to leave anyone in this country behind."

As context, what is important is that this is part of OpenAI's country-by-country program series "OpenAI for Countries." Linked to the "Stargate" data center initiative, the program is committed to laying down the rails of "democratic AI" — an alternative to authoritarian AI — in each country. In education, Estonia has rolled out ChatGPT Edu to all students and teachers in secondary education, and national-scale partnerships are advancing in Greece and Australia as well. However, the format of "distributing the paid plan itself to every citizen of an entire nation" is a first for Malta. OpenAI's official banner remains the raising of AI literacy and the diffusion of "democratic AI."

Why an "Unconventional Move"? — The Slowdown in User Growth Engulfing OpenAI

The ostensible cause behind the initiative is "AI literacy" and "democratic AI," but if you look at the timing, a different context emerges. Just before the Malta initiative, OpenAI was facing a headwind in the form of "slowing user growth."

In late April 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had been missing internal targets one after another. The company had set a goal of "1 billion weekly active users (WAU) by the end of 2025," but in reality, as of February 2026, the figure stood at around 900 million. Although this represented a staggering increase of roughly 125% from about 400 million in the same month of the previous year, it fell short of the company's own target. Furthermore, in the first half of 2026, several monthly revenue targets were also missed, and it was reported that OpenAI was losing ground to Google's Gemini in the consumer domain, and to Anthropic in coding and enterprise. OpenAI spokesperson Steve Sharpe rebutted the report as "classic clickbait," emphasizing the solid performance of consumer revenue and an enterprise business "in its best shape ever." However, the market's reaction was harsh: large amounts of market capitalization were wiped out from AI-related stocks, with Oracle falling 7.7%, CoreWeave 7.4%, and SoftBank Group 10%.

Shadows are also visible in the finer details of user metrics. ChatGPT's share of the U.S. mobile app market fell below 40% for the first time, while Anthropic's Claude app grew its share of daily active users from less than 2% to 10% in just three months. The phase in which ChatGPT was the dominant "face" of consumer AI is quietly drawing to a close.

Pricing strategy has also changed dramatically. OpenAI has positioned the low-priced "ChatGPT Go" plan at $8 per month (approximately 1,270 yen) as its mainstay, and according to reports, it has drawn a blueprint to expand paid consumer users from approximately 47 million in 2025 to around 122 million in 2026. Meanwhile, The Information reported an internal forecast that subscribers to the $20-per-month "Plus" plan would decrease by around 80%. Average revenue per user (ARPU) is projected to fall from around $23 per month to less than $12, and OpenAI is hurriedly launching an advertising business to fill the gap. In other words, a shift toward thin-margin, high-volume sales was underway: "increase paid users, but lower the unit price per user, and even shrink the flagship product Plus."

Placed in this context, the "unconventional" nature of the Malta initiative comes into view. Building data centers requires both time and capital, but the initiative to "distribute Plus to an entire country" can be realized with just a course, an ID infrastructure, and a single contract. It is cheap, fast, and politically easy to announce. It allows OpenAI to add subscribers to its shrinking flagship plan Plus in one country-sized batch all at once—for an OpenAI in a slowing phase, Malta was one of the few "fast moves" available.

The Shadow of Malta (Part 1): The Failed "Blockchain Island" Initiative

Here I want to shift the perspective to Malta's side. Why did OpenAI choose a small island nation of roughly 570,000 people as the stage for a "world first"? To answer that question, we need to look at two memories from Malta's past, when it tried—and failed—to sell "sovereignty" and "light-touch regulation" to foreign industries. One of these is the collapse of the "Blockchain Island" vision surrounding crypto assets.

In September 2018, then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat stood at the podium of the UN General Assembly and loftily proclaimed Malta a "Blockchain Island." His administration put forward a crypto-friendly jurisdiction as a centerpiece of its policy, and openly welcomed Binance—the world's largest crypto exchange, which was facing regulatory pressure in Japan and elsewhere. Exchanges such as OKEx and BitBay also relocated their bases to Malta one after another, and the island instantly drew attention as the "crypto capital." On November 1, 2018, three laws including the Virtual Financial Assets Act (VFA Act) came into force, and it appeared that a comprehensive crypto-asset regulatory framework—pioneering even by global standards—had been put in place.

Reality, however, failed to catch up with the declaration. The expected "regulatory clarity" never materialized; instead, local operators were confronted with legal ambiguity and stalled reviews. More than a year after the VFA Act took effect, hardly any operators had successfully obtained formal licenses under that framework. According to reports, roughly 70% of the crypto and blockchain firms that cleared the first stage of the application process ultimately either gave up on or failed to obtain a Maltese financial services license. The symbolic case was Binance. In 2020, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) declared that Binance was "not conducting activities that fall under licensing requirements" in the country. The flagship company that was supposed to anchor the "Blockchain Island" brand turned out, in fact, not to exist under Malta's regulatory oversight.

Even so, the brand's pull drew in capital. The crypto media outlet Decrypt has reported that, under the Blockchain Island strategy, around 70 billion dollars (roughly 11 trillion yen) passed through Malta. The problem was that no supervisory regime commensurate with that flow of money accompanied it. Regulatory ambiguity, delays in license screening, intensifying EU anti-money-laundering scrutiny, and—as discussed in the next chapter—the assassination of an investigative journalist: these factors compounded, and the growth model that sold "light-touch regulation" hit a wall within just a few years. The signboard ran ahead, while the substance failed to follow. This is Malta's first lesson.

The Shadow of Malta (Part 2): The FATF Grey List and Memories of Money Laundering

The stumbling of Blockchain Island was contiguous with a more serious reputational problem: inadequate anti-money laundering (AML) measures.

Looking back from the vantage point of May 2026, the symbolic moment arrived on June 25, 2021. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) added Malta to its list of "Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring," the so-called grey list. It was the first time an EU member state had been placed on the FATF grey list. What FATF flagged as problematic were the weakness of efforts against money laundering related to tax crimes, the underutilization of financial intelligence by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU), inaccuracies in beneficial ownership information of legal entities, and the absence of effective sanctions to ensure remediation. In short, the criticism was that authorities were not sufficiently able to grasp and pursue "who really controls which legal entity, and where the funds come from." Malta subsequently demonstrated "significant progress" through measures such as developing its beneficial ownership register, strengthening the coordination of financial intelligence, and enhancing the crackdown on tax-related money laundering, and was removed from the grey list approximately one year later, in June 2022.

This FATF listing was not a sudden accident but the consequence of a long-accumulated reputational problem. In the background was the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She pursued suspicions of corruption, cronyism, and money laundering involving senior Maltese government officials through reporting on the Panama Papers and other matters, and also delved into the links between the golden passport scheme, online gambling, and organized crime. On October 16, 2017, she was assassinated by a bomb planted in her car near her home. One of the matters she had been almost singularly pursuing during her lifetime was the alleged money laundering network surrounding the Iranian-linked Pilatus Bank. The credibility of a nation's AML efforts is graded by the international community along with the government's response to such incidents.

And what symbolizes Malta's history of selling off "sovereignty itself" is the golden passport (citizenship by investment) scheme. Since 2014, Malta has granted citizenship to third-country nationals in exchange for investments generally on the scale of 600,000 to 750,000 euros (approximately 110 to 140 million yen), thereby also conferring rights of residence and movement within the EU. However, on April 29, 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (European Court of Justice) ruled in the "European Commission v. Malta" case (C-181/23) that this scheme violated EU law. The court stated that a "transactional" procedure granting citizenship in exchange for predetermined payments or investments constitutes a "commodification" of citizenship and is incompatible with the fundamental concept of EU citizenship. Even citizenship, the bedrock of the state, has been sold with a price tag attached — and now this same Malta is offering AI platforms a market on the scale of "the entire nation." The second lesson is the fact that Malta has repeatedly lent out the "outer perimeter" of its own regulation and sovereignty to foreign industries seeking scale and legitimacy.

The True Identity of the "570,000 Paying Users"—Who Pays, and How Much

Based on the foregoing, let us calmly break down the expression "570,000 new paid users" appearing in this article's headline. Neither exaggerating nor downplaying, separating what has been confirmed as fact from what remains undetermined is the starting point for properly evaluating this initiative.

First, the meaning of "paid." The accounts being distributed are not the free version of ChatGPT, but ChatGPT Plus, the higher-tier plan that normally requires payment. In that sense, these are indeed "paid-plan accounts." However, Maltese citizens do not pay a single yen from their own wallets. So who pays? This is the core point on which reporting diverges. The news agency Reuters explicitly stated that OpenAI "has not disclosed the details of the transaction" and reported that the payment arrangement between the two parties is unknown. Meanwhile, winbuzzer and byteiota wrote that "the Maltese government will bear the cost at a pre-negotiated bulk rate," while Euronews's reporting framed it as "OpenAI providing the premium features, with Malta bearing the course development and operation." The Next Web stated that "OpenAI is providing it at a substantial discount/subsidy," estimated the "nominal retail value" at approximately $130 million (about ¥20.6 billion) if all citizens were to register, and added that "OpenAI's actual cost of provision is far lower than that."

In conclusion, the financial terms have not been officially disclosed, and who bears how much remains undetermined. This article records this "wavering" in the reporting as is. However, the important point is clear. In software with low marginal costs, even if OpenAI bears the funding for a nation's worth of Plus accounts, its actual cost falls far below the nominal retail value (approximately ¥20.6 billion). Conversely, if the Maltese government bears it, that means taxpayer funds flow to OpenAI.

Next, the figure "570,000 new users." The roughly 570,000 figure is merely "the upper bound of the target population," and it is not the case that 570,000 paid users were net-added the moment the announcement was made. Activation has a double gate: "completion of the AI for All course" and "identity verification via eID." The design expands in stages from Phase 1, and the actual number acquired will be limited to a portion of the target population and will accumulate over time. Furthermore, how OpenAI counts these accounts in its own disclosures — as "paid subscriptions," "Plus tier contractors," or "weekly active users" — depends on the undisclosed payment terms. Should "sponsored seats," where governments or companies foot the bill, be placed in the same row as subscribers who voluntarily pay $20 a month? This classification problem is precisely the central concern of VCs, as discussed in the next chapter.

How Silicon Valley VCs Read This Move

Only a few days have passed since the partnership was announced, and as of this writing, no examples have been confirmed of prominent venture capital (VC) firms commenting on the Malta deal by name. Therefore, in this chapter, we decode this move along the "yardsticks" that VCs use when evaluating this type of deal, while incorporating reported expert views. VC evaluations invariably split into two layers: bullish and bearish.

Let us begin with the bullish reading. One proposition widely shared in Silicon Valley is that "foundation models will be commoditized, and the real moat will shift to distribution, habit, ID integration, and workflow." Looking at performance alone, the gaps between GPT, Claude, and Gemini are narrowing. If that is so, what will decide victory is "in whose hands is it opened first, every day?" The Malta initiative weaves ChatGPT into the national digital ID and the state education system. This may well be called the extreme pole of distribution lock-in. From the perspective of customer acquisition cost (CAC), it is even more striking. For VCs who evaluate consumer products on CAC vs. LTV (lifetime value), "buying" an entire country for a nominal cost of roughly 20.6 billion yen (with actual costs even lower)—and obtaining it with a 12-month habit-formation runway attached—appears extraordinarily cheap. As suggested by the term "Sovereign AI" popularized by Nvidia's Jensen Huang, once a government is embedded into a system, it becomes an extremely sticky customer segment. Malta is an EU member state, and the operational track record gained here becomes a template that can plug directly into "OpenAI for Europe," which OpenAI has positioned for expansion in 2026—including SME training in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland, and the UK. In VC terms, Malta is "a cheap, contained pilot" and, if it wins, horizontal replication will work.

The bearish reading is the flip side. Several tech outlets (such as startupfortune) have characterized this partnership as "a 'vanity metric' wrapped in civic language." The logic is this: OpenAI is currently laying the groundwork for an IPO (initial public offering). The company raised roughly $122 billion (about 19 trillion yen) in March 2026, reaching a post-money valuation of approximately $852 billion (about 135 trillion yen). Internal targets call for filing for listing in the second half of 2026 and going public in 2027, with a valuation of up to $1 trillion (about 159 trillion yen). However, as noted above, current circumstances find it missing its 1-billion WAU target, falling short on multiple monthly revenue targets, and its flagship Plus subscriber base is internally projected to drop by 80%. Under these headwinds, the headline "added an entire country to Plus" carries more value as a "story" than as a pure business reality. What a disciplined VC asks is not the numbers at announcement, but "the retention rate in the 13th month." When the free 12 months end, what percentage of Maltese citizens will continue Plus out of their own pockets? If a high retention rate emerges, the land grab will be justified, but if a churn cliff is exposed, it will substantiate the "vanity metric" criticism.

The bearish reading also connects to larger macro concerns. OpenAI carries compute commitments on the order of roughly $1.4 trillion (about 222 trillion yen) (more recent reports suggest narrowing compute spending through 2030 to about $600 billion = roughly 95 trillion yen), while its annualized revenue stands at only about $25 billion (about 4 trillion yen). To generate revenue of approximately $280 billion (about 44 trillion yen) by 2030, growth of more than 10x in four years is required by calculation. The question posed in 2024 by a partner at Sequoia Capital—"AI's $600 billion question," namely whether revenue commensurate with AI's infrastructure investment truly exists—has not gone away. In the midst of this, the act of "giving away subscriptions for free" appears contradictory to a phase in which monetization should be urgent. The view is that unless Malta's cohort (the customer group acquired in the same period) genuinely converts to paid, this is merely burning cash. Spoken of in contrast is Anthropic. In April 2026, the company was reported to have reached annualized revenue of approximately $30 billion (about 4.77 trillion yen), surpassing OpenAI (annualized of approximately $25 billion = about 4 trillion yen). However, OpenAI's Chief Revenue Officer has objected over the gross/net accounting method for cloud-channel revenue, claiming Anthropic's figures are overstated by about $8 billion (about 1.3 trillion yen), so even here the reporting fluctuates. Either way, Anthropic earns roughly 80% of its revenue from corporate customers and has no need to scatter freebies to consumers. "The side that can't make the numbers without giving away a country" versus "the side that's growing without giving anything away"—VCs will not miss this contrast.

Data and regulatory risks are also items that always raise red flags in due diligence (pre-investment vetting). In this initiative, ChatGPT usage is tied to the national digital ID. These are not anonymous accounts but accounts whose identities have been guaranteed by the government. AI policy researcher Miranda Bogen was reported to have sounded the alarm regarding partnerships with governments, saying they "raise serious questions about how human rights are protected from government data requests." Malta is a country to which GDPR (the EU General Data Protection Regulation) applies, but the data governance terms specific to this deal have not been disclosed. Furthermore, among experts, there is a strong view that frames this structure as "nation-scale, government-subsidized vendor lock-in." Likened to the history of AWS and Azure scattering vast credits to corral customers, it is pointed out that "if you design a country's entire AI literacy education around ChatGPT, that government cannot easily switch to Mistral or Claude." On Hacker News and Reddit too, while the focus on AI literacy was appreciated, concerns about privacy, taxpayer burden, and the doubt of "isn't this ultimately about OpenAI's user acquisition?" intermingled.

Finally, let us summarize "why Malta" from a VC and deal perspective. The reasons Malta was chosen are: its small population (= a cheap, contained pilot), its legitimacy and templatability as an EU member state, the "clean distribution rails" of a powerful eID infrastructure, and the low localization friction provided by English being an official language—all these elements were in place. But there is another irony that any VC would notice. Malta has repeatedly, as seen in the past with crypto's "Blockchain Island" and the golden passports, lent out the "outer perimeter" of its own regulatory and sovereign jurisdiction to foreign industries seeking scale and legitimacy. The "flexibility" of Malta that attracted Binance and the "flexibility" that attracted OpenAI are of the same nature. A counterparty that can move with a focus on speed is easy to put a deal together with. But that same flexibility has also been the breeding ground for a history in which the ECJ ruled golden passports illegal and the FATF ordered it onto the grey list. The VC's concluding remark would probably be this: "Ideal as a testing ground. However, investors should not forget what experiments this testing ground has failed at in the past."

Differences in Tone Across Media Coverage—How Each Newspaper and Website Reported It

Even for the same facts, clear differences in temperature emerged in how they were reported.

OpenAI's official announcement and the Maltese government's statement were, naturally, the brightest in tone. Phrases like "world first," "leaving no one behind," and "citizen empowerment" lined up, with the causes of AI literacy and "democratic AI" placed front and center. The wire service Reuters (distributed via an investment information site), by contrast, was matter-of-fact, explicitly noting that "OpenAI has not disclosed details of the deal" and flagging the opacity of the financial terms. Outlets such as Euronews, Quartz, and Engadget likewise reported the facts in a largely neutral manner. That said, Engadget touched on OpenAI having paused its Stargate data center plan in the UK due to high electricity costs and regulatory issues, quietly raising a separate point of contention around resource-allocation decisions.

The more analytical the outlet, the more cautious the tone became. Winbuzzer framed it as "turning ChatGPT Plus into an AI benefit for all of Malta," explaining the structure in which the government absorbs the costs. The Next Web ran the headline "The first country—but with one condition," digging into the motivation of saturation in mature markets. And outlets such as Dataconomy, byteiota, and startupfortune foregrounded critical angles like vendor lock-in, vanity metrics, and "the nationalization of ChatGPT access as public infrastructure."

Particularly interesting were the reactions from crypto-asset media. MEXC, KuCoin, Binance Square, and others took up the partnership from the distinctive angle that it "could be a tailwind for Malta's crypto industry." This is evidence that the memory of Malta once styling itself "Blockchain Island" still frames how this island is reported on today. Community discussions were even more divided. On Hacker News and Reddit, voices welcoming the idea of nation-scale AI education coexisted with those questioning privacy, the tax burden, and service to OpenAI's growth strategy. On the whole, the tone of English-language media swung between "groundbreaking public policy" and "a clever user-acquisition tactic," depending on each outlet's stance.

Future Focus—When and Where Will the Next Move Be Measured?

Finally, let us organize when and what kind of new developments will become "measurable" going forward.

First, in the immediate term, Phase 1 went live in May 2026. The first signals observable over the next 12 months will be the "number of AI for All course completers" and the "number of ChatGPT Plus activations." Whether OpenAI and the Maltese government regularly disclose these figures will itself serve as the first test of the initiative's transparency.

Within 2026, OpenAI is likely to begin using Malta's operational track record as a template for "OpenAI for Europe." That initiative is set to expand in 2026 into education and healthcare, AI skills training and certification, disaster response, cybersecurity, and startup support, with SME-targeted training rolled out across six countries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ireland, and the UK. The education-focused "Education for Countries" is also expected to announce its next cohort in the latter half of 2026. OpenAI for Countries itself sets a near-term goal of "projects in 10 countries/regions," and whether a "second country to distribute to all citizens" emerges after Malta will be the next focus.

And then there is OpenAI's IPO. Internal targets reportedly call for a listing application in the second half of 2026 and a listing in 2027. In the Q2–Q3 earnings reports, and in the prospectus (S-1) to be filed at some point, the question of which metric—"weekly active users," "paid subscriptions," or "Plus tier subscribers"—OpenAI uses to account for the Malta cohort, and how, will be the point investors and analysts watch most closely. If "sponsored seats" paid for by governments and corporations are lined up alongside voluntarily paying subscribers, debate over the quality of disclosure is bound to erupt.

The greatest litmus test will arrive in the spring of 2027. The free 12 months in Malta will have run their course, and citizens will face the choice—for the first time—of whether to "continue Plus out of their own pocket." A high retention rate would validate the success of the land grab; a low retention rate—a churn cliff—would validate the "vanity metric" critique. Around the same time, it will also be worth watching how Anthropic, Google, and Europe's standard-bearer Mistral move. The EU places great weight on "sovereign AI" and data sovereignty, and while OpenAI has already put European data residency in place, the political preference for European-made AI remains deeply rooted. It also cannot be ruled out that EU data protection authorities or AI Act–related authorities will inquire into the data governance of the Malta deal. Malta itself still carries the memory of the golden passport issue following the ECJ ruling and of being on the FATF gray list.

"An unconventional play for slowing user growth"—will this single move be remembered as the dawn of a new national GTM (go-to-market) playbook for the AI era, or as one example of pre-IPO number-padding? The answer will come a year from now, after the glamour of the announcement has faded, when Maltese citizens quietly choose "continue" or "cancel."

Sources

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