Sea Limited’s Shopee, the dominant e-commerce platform across Southeast Asia and Brazil, is cutting hundreds of developer positions globally as part of a broader pivot toward artificial intelligence. The move places Shopee squarely in a growing cohort of tech companies deciding that AI can do what their engineers used to.
AI adoption has been cited as the primary driver behind roughly 47.9% of tech layoffs in the first quarter of 2026.
Sea Limited, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker SE, operates three main business lines: Shopee for e-commerce, Garena for gaming, and SeaMoney (also known as Monee) for digital financial services including payments and lending. The company went public in 2017, having been founded in 2009 originally as Garena before launching Shopee in 2015.
Since 2022, Sea Limited has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs affecting hundreds of roles across various departments. Those earlier cuts hit engineering and product teams alongside marketing and operations staff, part of a company-wide effort to optimize costs and improve the bottom line.
It’s worth noting that Sea’s digital financial services arm, SeaMoney, has no public ties to cryptocurrency tokens or blockchain technology. The company’s strategy remains firmly anchored in traditional digital services.
