Shopee Lays Off Hundreds as Parent Sea Pivots Resources to AI

Shopee has started cutting hundreds of developer positions worldwide — representing about 8% of its engineering team — as parent company Sea shifts resources toward its growing AI push. The reductions include quality assurance roles, with affected employees expected to leave in phases from late June to late August. A Sea spokesperson said the company adjusts headcount based on business needs and will provide assistance to affected staff.

CEO Forrest Li has increasingly positioned AI as central to Sea's long-term growth across Shopee, Garena, and Monee. Shopee already uses AI to personalise shopping results and power merchant-facing tools, and in February the company partnered with Google to co-develop AI-powered shopping features. The retrenchment comes as Singapore's tech sector navigates a broader rebalancing between traditional engineering roles and AI-focused positions.

Singapore's Creative Media and Publishing Union received advance notice and deployed representatives to Shopee's office to assist affected workers. Sea has committed to retrenchment payouts following the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower and Responsible Retrenchment. The Taskforce for Responsible Retrenchment acknowledged the company's early engagement with the union as a positive step.

Why it matters for Singapore: This is the clearest sign yet that even Singapore's largest homegrown tech company is reshaping its workforce around AI priorities. The 8% cut may not sound massive, but it sends a signal to the local tech talent pool: traditional software engineering roles are being deprioritised in favour of AI specialists. Whether those displaced developers are retrained or replaced will say a lot about how Singapore manages its AI transition.