Forrest Li on Deploying AI in Shopee and Free Fire
How Forrest Li uses AI at Sea Group to resolve 80% of Shopee support inquiries and replace outsourced game art for Free Fire.
Sea founder and CEO Forrest Li in conversation with Tyler Bryson
With Forrest Li, Tyler Bryson · Sunday, September 6, 2026
Sea founder and CEO Forrest Li sits down with Stripe Chief Revenue Officer Tyler Bryson at Stripe Tour Singapore to discuss the evolution of Sea Group across Garena, Shopee, and SeaMoney. Li explains how addressing hyper-local market constraints—such as low credit card penetration and fragmented logistics—enabled Sea to outcompete US and Chinese tech giants across Southeast Asia and Latin America. He also discusses Sea's organizational culture, the deployment of generative AI across customer service and game development, and the founder resilience required to build multi-billion dollar ecosystems.
Key takeaways
- Shopee resolves over 80% of customer support inquiries entirely through automated AI chat systems, hitting customer satisfaction scores higher than human agents. Read more →
- Global gaming executives dismissed Southeast Asia in 2009 because low regional credit card penetration produced zero digital revenue. Read more →
- Sea Group operates across 60,000 employees in units like Shopee, Garena, and SeaMoney while forcing every division to act like a day-one startup. Read more →
- In Indonesia, credit card penetration sits below 20%, forcing millions of consumers to delay essential purchases or borrow from predatory lenders. Read more →
- Global tech giants from China and the United States struggled in emerging markets because they exported rigid home-market systems instead of adapting to local infrastructure constraints. Read more →
5 articles from this episode
How Forrest Li Unlocked Southeast Asian Gaming With Prepaid Cards
Forrest Li shares how Garena solved gaming monetization by filling an office with physical prepaid cards and delivering them directly to cybercafes.
Forrest Li: How Sea Scales Startup Culture to 60,000 Staff
Sea CEO Forrest Li explains the five operating values and hiring tactics keeping Shopee and Garena agile at 60,000 employees.
How Sea Built a $10B Digital Credit Book on Payroll Cycles
Sea founder Forrest Li explains how Shopee solved Southeast Asia's 20% credit card penetration with SPayLater, building a $10B loan book across 50M borrowers.
Why Shopee Beat Amazon and Alibaba in Indonesia and Brazil
Forrest Li explains how fractional pricing in Indonesia and low-cost logistics in Brazil helped Shopee defeat US and Chinese e-commerce giants.
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