Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how value is created across Southeast Asia’s internet sector, shifting the focus from cost savings to platform capabilities such as fulfilment, payments and consumer trust, with Sea Ltd seen as one of the key beneficiaries of the trend, Maybank Investment Bank said Monday.
The research house said in a note that the key conclusion was of its recent investor webinar with Tom Simpson, Founder of Digital in Asia, Publisher of the Hyperfuture Memo, and Operator of AK3R, AI is not just a cost-efficiency story, but a structural shift in how consumer internet value is created.
In e-commerce, the debate shifts to context, agent-led discovery and marketplace advertising, where Shopee’s logistics, fulfilment, payments, trust layer and shelf-placement infrastructure could become more important.
In gaming, AI can enhance immersion through smarter characters, richer live-ops and faster content creation, while gaming worlds may become training environments for next-generation AI models.
“We see this as supportive of Sea’s multicontext advantage across Shopee, Garena and Monee,” said Maybank.
According to the note, on e-commerce, the key takeaway was constructive: AI agents may change the interface, but they do not remove the need for marketplaces.
These agents still require a trusted transaction layer with catalog depth, fulfilment, payments, reviews, returns and dispute resolution.
This means marketplaces could become more important as the substrate on which both humans and agents transact.
Demand is likely to split into two streams: humans continue to browse, watch live commerce and respond to creator-led discovery, while agents shortlist products based on price,
availability, reviews, fulfilment speed and shelf position.
“For Shopee, this suggests AI could reinforce the marketplace moat, provided it remains the preferred infrastructure layer for both demand channels,” said Maybank.
Meanwhile, one of the key areas of investor pushback around internet names has been whether AI weakens marketplace advertising businesses, but Tom’s view is that the risk is likely overstated.
Marketplace advertising may evolve from creative-led visibility to preferential shelf placement.
Human shoppers will still respond to search ads, video, livestreaming and sponsored placements.
Agents, however, do not browse thousands of SKUs or engage with brand storytelling; they may only consider a shortlist of around 50 products, or fewer. That makes visibility inside the agent shortlist highly valuable.
“As a result, Shopee’s ad business could prove more resilient than feared, with upside from brands and sellers shifting budgets away from Meta and Google toward marketplace shelf placement,” said Maybank.
On gaming, Tom argued Garena’s strategic value may be underappreciated in Sea’s AI narrative.
For him, gaming is not just an entertainment vertical; it is a live environment with communities, economies, behavioral data and cause-and-effect interactions.
AI could improve Garena’s live-ops capability, lower content production costs, accelerate user-generated content and extend the monetization lifecycle of hit titles such as Free
Fire.
More strategically, gaming worlds may become useful training environments for next-generation AI models that must learn from simulations, spatial reasoning and cause-and-effect behavior rather than text alone.
“This gives Garena additional optionality beyond bookings, while strengthening Sea’s broader multi-context flywheel across gaming, commerce and fintech,” said Maybank.
Singapore-based Sea Ltd seeks to expand to banking, financial services in Vietnam