Shopee cuts hundreds of developer jobs amid AI adoption

By Editorial Team · Published June 10, 2026 · 2 min read · Source: Crypto Briefing

Shopee cuts hundreds of developer jobs amid AI adoption

Sea Limited's e-commerce arm is reportedly trimming its developer workforce as the company leans into artificial intelligence, joining a growing wave of tech firms replacing human coders with AI tools.

Add us on Google by Editorial Team Jun. 10, 2026

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.

For investors tracking Sea Limited, these cuts send a mixed signal. On one hand, reducing headcount while adopting AI tools should, in theory, lower operating expenses and improve margins. On the other hand, e-commerce platforms require constant iteration, bug fixes, localization for different markets, and rapid feature deployment to stay competitive against rivals like Lazada and Tokopedia.

For Sea specifically, the absence of any crypto or blockchain exposure in its financial services division means investors don’t need to worry about volatility from that corner. The company’s risk profile remains tied to e-commerce competition in Southeast Asia and Latin America, gaming revenues from Garena, and the execution risk of its AI transition.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

This article was originally published on Crypto Briefing and is republished here under RSS syndication for informational purposes. All rights and intellectual property remain with the original author. If you are the author and wish to have this article removed, please contact us at [email protected].