Singapore-based Sea Ltd plans to sell the cloud platform it built for its own businesses to enterprises under a new brand, Sea Cloud, founder and chief executive Forrest Li told employees in an email the company filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 20 October.
The email, sent to mark nine years since Sea’s New York Stock Exchange listing on 20 October 2017, said the company has built and run its own cloud platform for more than ten years. That platform underpins Garena, Shopee and Monee, Mr Li wrote.
Rebuilt for AI
Over the past two years, around 500 staff have been rebuilding the platform to support AI applications across Sea, according to the email. Mr Li said taking an AI idea into production internally is now much faster than it was two years ago, and that Sea will now offer that capability externally.
“Sea Cloud will be an AI-first enterprise platform,” he wrote, adding that it is built by a team with a decade of experience running infrastructure at large scale. The email did not give a launch date, pricing or financial details for the new business. Industry publication W.Media, which reported on the announcement, named Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud as competitors in the space.
Monee could go public
Mr Li also signalled a possible listing for Monee, Sea’s financial services arm. He wrote that Monee is approaching the point where it can stand on its own, and that going public could give it the resources to grow faster than it can today. The email did not name an exchange or a timetable.
The email set out Sea’s growth since its listing: Garena’s quarterly active users rose from 69 million to 666 million, Shopee’s quarterly gross merchandise value grew from US$1.1 billion to US$38.3 billion, and quarterly revenue increased from US$94 million to US$7.8 billion. Mr Li said all three businesses are profitable and still growing.
Market reaction
Sea’s shares fell 9.09% on 20 October following the release of the letter, according to The Low Down, a newsletter published by Momentum Works.
