NextFin News - Sea Ltd., the Singaporean internet giant behind Shopee and Garena, has established a dedicated artificial intelligence investment team, signaling a decisive pivot toward deep-tech integration as it seeks to secure its next decade of growth. The move, led by founder and CEO Forrest Li, marks a transition from the company’s recent era of aggressive cost-cutting and "survival mode" toward a capital-intensive bet on generative AI and automation across its e-commerce and financial services ecosystems.
The new unit is tasked with identifying and backing early-stage AI startups that can complement Sea’s existing infrastructure, according to people familiar with the matter. This internal shift follows Li’s increasingly vocal stance on AI’s transformative potential; in late 2025, he reportedly told employees that a $1 trillion market capitalization—a tenfold increase from current levels—was achievable if the company successfully harnessed AI to redefine its core business units. The investment team represents the formalization of this vision, moving beyond internal R&D to an external acquisition and partnership strategy.
Sea’s pivot comes at a critical juncture for Southeast Asian tech. After years of prioritizing market share at any cost, the region’s leaders are now grappling with a landscape where efficiency is the primary metric of success. For Sea, AI is not merely a buzzword but a tool for survival in a market increasingly crowded by ByteDance’s TikTok Shop and Alibaba’s Lazada. By automating logistics routing for Shopee and credit scoring for SeaMoney, the company aims to widen its moat through technical superiority rather than subsidized shipping or marketing blitzes.
However, the strategy is not without its detractors. Some analysts remain skeptical of Sea’s ability to compete in a global AI arms race dominated by Silicon Valley and Beijing-based titans. "Sea is essentially a consumer internet company trying to build a deep-tech layer on top of legacy systems," noted one regional tech analyst who requested anonymity. "While the investment team is a step in the right direction, the capital requirements for meaningful AI breakthroughs are astronomical, and Sea’s balance sheet, while healthier than it was two years ago, still lacks the bottomless depth of a Google or a Tencent."
The formation of the AI team also reflects a broader trend among "Generation 1" Southeast Asian tech firms attempting to reinvent themselves. Much like its regional peer Grab, which has also integrated AI into its ride-hailing and delivery algorithms, Sea is betting that localized data will be its greatest asset. The company’s vast repository of consumer behavior data across Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam provides a unique training ground for AI models that global competitors may struggle to replicate with the same level of granularity.
Forrest Li’s "forever time horizon," a phrase he has frequently used in recent interviews, suggests that this AI pivot is intended to be a multi-year transformation rather than a quarterly fix. By positioning Sea as an AI-first entity, Li is attempting to re-rate the company in the eyes of investors—moving it away from the volatile "emerging market e-commerce" category and toward the more resilient "global tech platform" valuation. Whether the new investment team can find the "next big thing" in AI before the competition does will likely determine if Sea’s trillion-dollar dream remains a mathematical possibility or a founder’s hyperbole.
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