Singaporean technology company
Sea Limited (stylized as: sea) is a tech conglomerate headquartered in Singapore. Established in 2009 by Forrest Li, Sea was initially founded as Garena, a game development and publishing company known for its "Free Fire" title. The company rebranded itself under the present-day Sea brand in May 2017 after securing funding worth US$550 million, although the Garena brand was retained for its digital entertainment arm. Sea has over 67,000 employees, as of 2022.
Sea currently functions as a holding company for Garena, SeaMoney, Shopee and Maribank. 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.
History.
2009 - 2015.
The company initially named Garena was established by Forrest Li in Singapore in 2009. 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.
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". 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.
Transition.
In May 2017, after raising US$550 million in a funding round, Garena underwent a corporate rebranding. 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. The company's digital entertainment segment retained the Garena name, maintaining its brand identity in the gaming industry.
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.
On 9 September 2021, Sea raised US$6 billion in an equity and convertible bond sale, making it Southeast Asia's largest fund raising. Sea said it planned to use the cash for strategic investments and potential acquisitions.
In January 2022, Tencent, the Chinese gaming giant, offloaded a US$3 billion investment in Sea. In the same year, Sea discontinued its investment division and ceased new equity investments.
In March 2023, Sea opened its digital bank, Maribank, after securing a digital full bank license from Monetary Authority of Singapore. It also owned banking license in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.
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.
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. The company also serves consumers and sellers throughout Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia), Taiwan, and Brazil.
SeaMoney.
SeaMoney is an internet services company specialized in digital payments and financial services. Its 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 (or SPinjam in Indonesia and SEasyCash in Thailand), and even SeaBank and MariBank. SeaMoney served over 52 million users as of the second quarter of 2022.
Garena.
Garena operates as the digital entertainment division of Sea, managing Garena+, an online gaming and social platform established in 2010. This platform facilitates the discovery, download, and play of online games. 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".
In 2017, Garena developed "Free Fire", an online action-adventure game that became the most downloaded game on the Google Play Store in 2019.
Following a decline in profit in 2022, Sea reported that it had stabilized the performance of its digital entertainment business in 2023. 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.
References.
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