Sea Ltd

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Sea Limited
Sea Ltd
Company type Public
NYSE:  SE
ISIN US81141R1005
Founded2009;16 years ago (2009) as Garena
2017;8 years ago (2017) as Sea Ltd
Founder Forrest Li
Headquarters1 Fusionopolis Place, #17-10, Galaxis, Singapore 138522
Area served
Worldwide
Products
RevenueUS$16.8 billion [1]  (2024)
US$444 million [1]  (2024)
Owners(As per 30 June 2024) [2]
  • Tencent (18.4 %), [3]
  • Baillie Gifford & Co. (6.45%), [2]
  • Forrest Li (3.67%),
  • Tiger Global Management LLC (2.84%), [2]
  • BlackRock Fund Advisors (2.06%), [2]
  • Sands Capital Management LLC (1.76%) [2]
Subsidiaries Garena
Lion City Sailors FC
MariBank
MariBank Philippines
Monee
SeaBank Indonesia
Shopee
Website www.sea.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Footnotes /references
[4]

Sea Limited (stylized as: sea) is a tech conglomerate headquartered in Singapore. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with revenue of US$16.8 billion (2024). [1] Sea currently functions as a holding company for Garena, Monee and Shopee, the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. [5]

Contents

Since 2020, Sea is also the owner of Singapore Premier League football club Lion City Sailors FC, after Forrest Li acquired, privatised and renamed Home United. [6]

History

2009–2015

The company initially named Garena was established by Forrest Li in Singapore in 2009. [7] In 2010, Riot Games awarded the publishing rights of League of Legends (LoL) to the company, for the game’s first launch in Southeast Asia. [8]

By 2014, Garena was valued at US$1 billion by The World Startup Report and was ranked as the largest internet company in Singapore by The Economist . [9] [10] In March 2015, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), one of the largest pension funds in the world, invested in Garena, increasing the value of the company to over US$2.5 billion. [11]

Transition to Sea Limited

In May 2017, after raising US$550 million in a funding round, Garena underwent a corporate rebranding. [12] The parent company adopted the name Sea Ltd. to better reflect its diverse range of businesses, which now includes digital entertainment, e-commerce, and digital financial services. [13] The company's digital entertainment segment retained the Garena name, maintaining its brand identity in the gaming industry. [14]

2017–present

Sea listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017, where it was the first major U.S. IPO from a Southeast Asian tech firm. [15]

In 2020, Sea joined the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in Singapore to hire and train 500 Singaporeans in technical roles over the course of two years. It was the largest company-led training initiative under IMDA's TechSkills Accelerator program. [16]

In 2021, Sea gave a S$50 million gift to the National University of Singapore's (NUS) School of Computing for research and education in areas such as artificial intelligence and data science, making it the largest corporate gift the university had received. [17] Sea and NUS officially opened two new buildings in January 2025, the Sea Building and Sea Connect, at the NUS School of Computing. [18]

On 9 September 2021, Sea raised US$6 billion in an equity and convertible bond sale, making it Southeast Asia's largest fund raising. [19] Sea said it planned to use the cash for strategic investments and potential acquisitions. [20]

In January 2022, Tencent, the Chinese gaming giant, offloaded a US$3 billion investment in Sea. [21] In the same year, Sea discontinued its investment division and ceased new equity investments. [22]

In March 2023, Sea opened its digital bank, Maribank, after securing a digital full bank license from Monetary Authority of Singapore. [23] It also owned banking license in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. [24] In 2025, Maribank launched a new banking group to expand digital banking services in Southeast Asia. [25]

In March 2024, Sea posted its first profitable year since its IPO with an annual net income of US$162.7 million for the 2023 financial year. [26]

Subsidiaries

Shopee

Shopee is a technology company focused mainly on e-commerce. Shopee was first launched in Singapore in 2015, and has grown to become the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. [27] The company also serves consumers and sellers throughout Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia), Taiwan, and Brazil. [28] [29]

Monee

Monee (formerly known as SeaMoney) is an internet services company specialized in digital payments and financial services. It's offerings include mobile wallet services, payment processing, credit offerings and related digital financial products and services. These are available in seven markets across Southeast Asia and Taiwan under various brands, including ShopeePay, SPayLater, SLoan, SeaBank, and MariBank. [30] [31] Monee's loan book exceeded $5 billion in 2025, at the time of the rebranding. [32] Sea Chairman and CEO Forrest Li stated the name Monee was chosen because "it is simple, cute, and just like Sea, easy to write and pronounce." [33]

On May 8, 2025, the SeaMoney rebranding to Monee occurred alongside the opening of Monee's global headquarters for digital financial services at Rochester Commons in Singapore. [34] As part of the expansion, Monee will be investing in product management, artificial intelligence and anti-money laundering. [31]

Garena

Garena operates as the digital entertainment division of Sea, managing Garena+, an online gaming and social platform established in 2010. [35] This platform facilitates the discovery, download, and play of online games. [35] Garena distributes game titles in various countries across Southeast Asia and Taiwan, including MOBA games League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth , the first-person shooter game Point Blank , the mobile MOBA game Arena of Valor and the mobile racing game Speed Drifters . [36]

In 2017, Garena developed Free Fire , an online action-adventure game that became the most downloaded game on the Google Play Store in 2019. [37]

Following a decline in profit in 2022, Sea reported that it had stabilized the performance of its digital entertainment business in 2023. [38] [39] The company indicated that Garena had maintained steady demand for its popular title, Free Fire, which achieved a peak of over 100 million daily active users in February 2024. [40]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Sea Reports 29% Revenue Growth to US$16820M and Net Income Triples to US$444M". Yahoo. 4 March 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Equities". Financial Times.
  3. ↑ "FORM 20-F". SEC.
  4. ↑ "Sea Group". Sea Group. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  5. ↑ "Temu, Shopee, TikTok Shop: Who will win the e-commerce battle in SEA" . Retrieved 15 June 2025.
  6. ↑ Chia, Han Keong (14 February 2020). "Lion City Sailors are Singapore's first privatised football club".
  7. ↑ "Tech company Garena raises US$550m, rebrands as Sea". The Straits Times. 8 May 2017.
  8. ↑ Bernardo, Anna (9 November 2022). "Riot Games to take back League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics publishing in SEA from Garena in 2023". Yahoo News. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  9. ↑ "Singapore's Tech Company Garena Valued At USD1 Billion". Archived from the original on 8 August 2014.
  10. ↑ "Start me up". The Economist . Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  11. ↑ Grant, Jeremy (March 2015). "Ontario Teachers Pension Plan bets on Asia with Garena stake". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  12. ↑ Lee, Yoolim (8 May 2017). "Garena Rebrands as Sea After Raising $550 Million in New Funding" . Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 14 May 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  13. ↑ Chia Yan Min (9 May 2017). "Tech firm Garena gets renamed as Sea". The Straits Times. Singapore Press Holdings. Archived from the original on 23 July 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  14. ↑ "Garena rebrands to Sea and raises $550 million more to focus on Indonesian e-commerce". 8 May 2017. Archived from the original on 22 October 2020. Retrieved 7 August 2020. Garena was founded in 2009 as an online gaming platform and its games business will retain that name.
  15. ↑ Russell, Jon (21 October 2017). "Southeast Asia gaming and e-commerce firm Sea ends first day on NYSE up 8%". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  16. ↑ Wong, Lester (2 October 2020). "Shopee parent company Sea to hire and train 500 Singaporeans over next two years". The Straits Times. Retrieved 20 March 2025.
  17. ↑ "S'pore tech company Sea donates $50 million to NUS for computing research and education". The Straits Times. Archived from the original on 8 June 2023. Retrieved 20 March 2025.
  18. ↑ Chan, Romaine (21 January 2025). "NUS launches 2 buildings named after Sea as it aims to drive AI, computing research". The Business Times. Retrieved 20 March 2025.
  19. ↑ Murdoch, Scott (10 September 2021). "Singapore's Sea Ltd secures $6 billion in mega fund raising". Reuters. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  20. ↑ "Sea Group seeks to raise up to USD 7.2 billion in Southeast Asia's largest ever equity round". KrASIA. 9 September 2021. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  21. ↑ "Amid regulatory crackdowns, Tencent takes a tactical approach to its investments". KrASIA. 2 March 2022. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  22. ↑ Yong, Yimie (2 June 2023). "Singapore's Sea Ltd winds down investment arm - report". TechNode Global.
  23. ↑ Ang, Prisca (14 March 2023). "Sea opens digital bank MariBank to public on invite-only basis". Straits Times. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
  24. ↑ Chiang, Sheila (15 March 2023). "Sea Group's digital bank launches in Singapore to a select group of individuals". CNBC. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
  25. ↑ Vimalan, Dhanya (9 May 2025). "Shopee's Sea rebrands SeaMoney to Monee". Marketing Interactive. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
  26. ↑ Chong, Claudia (22 December 2023). "Sea to post first profitable year since IPO: CEO". The Business Times. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  27. ↑ "Top Websites Ranking". similarweb. 1 June 2024.
  28. ↑ "As Shopee expands aggressively around the world, will it become the 'Amazon of emerging economies'?". KrASIA. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  29. ↑ "Garena's Shopee could be on its way to beating Carousell in Asia". Tech in Asia. 24 November 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
  30. ↑ "Monee | Bringing Digital Financial Services To Millions". www.monee.com. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  31. 1 2 Cher, Benjamin (8 May 2025). "SeaMoney rebrands to Monee, opens new headquarters for Sea group's digital financial services". The Business Times. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  32. ↑ Caproasia (9 May 2025). "Southeast Asia $86 Billion Gaming & E-Commerce Giant Sea Ltd Fintech SeaMoney Launched in 2014 Rebrands to Monee Which Includes Singapore MariBank & Indonesia SeaBank, Current Loan Book at $5 Billion with 26 Million Active Credit Users, Sea Ltd Owns Garena, Monee (SeaMoney), Shopee & Maribank, IPO on NYSE in 2017, Share Price +39% YTD, +120.9% in Last 12 Months & +133.3% in Last 5 Years | Caproasia" . Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  33. ↑ Lim, Lionel. "Sea rebrands its fintech arm to Monee, a 'cute' name for an increasingly important business". Fortune Asia. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  34. ↑ "Shopee parent Sea opens new financial services HQ in S'pore, rebrands SeaMoney as Monee". The Straits Times. 8 May 2025. ISSN   0585-3923 . Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  35. 1 2 Balea, Jum (31 March 2016). "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". www.techinasia.com.
  36. ↑ "Garena". www.garena.sg.
  37. ↑ Obedkov, Evgeny (17 August 2021). "Mobile battle royale Free Fire surpasses 150 million peak daily active players". Game World Observer. Archived from the original on 14 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  38. ↑ Cher, Benjamin (9 March 2024). "Garena's gaming revival could prove a false dawn for Sea". The Business Times.
  39. ↑ Chiang, Sheila (8 March 2023). "Singapore's Sea Group turns profitable for the first time". CNBC.
  40. ↑ Poh, Olivia (4 March 2024). "Sea's Shares Climb After Big Spending Helps It Fight TikTok". Bloomberg.com.
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