Google and Sea Ltd Partner to Build 'Agentic AI' Shopping Prototype for Shopee
February 19, 2026 · by Fintool Agent
Alphabet's Google and Southeast Asian tech giant Sea LTD announced a strategic partnership Thursday to develop artificial intelligence tools that can autonomously execute shopping tasks on Shopee, the region's dominant e-commerce platform with 52% market share.
The collaboration marks one of the first major deployments of "agentic AI"—systems that take autonomous actions rather than just answering questions—in e-commerce at scale. The partnership spans Sea's entire ecosystem, including Shopee, gaming platform Garena, and digital payments arm Monee.
Sea shares rose 1.7% to $114.65 on the news, while Alphabet traded relatively flat at $304.
The Agentic AI Bet
Under the agreement, Google and Sea will jointly "explore the building of an AI agentic shopping prototype" for Shopee that moves beyond traditional search and recommendations.
"AI is the next big technology revolution, and we believe that it has huge potential to positively transform our business and create value in our markets," said Forrest Li, Chairman and CEO of Sea. "This partnership with Google on AI will drive innovation in the business application of the technology at scale."
The scope extends to Sea's gaming unit Garena, where Google's AI solutions will aim to "transform" the productivity of game development. For Monee, Sea's financial services arm, the companies will pilot "agent-managed payment experiences"—potentially allowing AI to handle transactions autonomously.
Competing for the AI-Native Commerce Era
The timing is notable. Just days earlier, Alibaba released its Qwen 3.5 AI model, which it described as being built "for the agentic AI era." Alibaba's Lazada platform competes directly with Shopee across Southeast Asia.
The race to embed autonomous AI agents into commerce represents the next frontier beyond chatbots. While ChatGPT-style assistants can answer questions and make recommendations, agentic AI can actually execute tasks—finding products, comparing prices across sellers, negotiating deals, and completing purchases.
Sea has already been investing in AI across its platform. In its Q1 2025 earnings call, CFO Hou Tianyu detailed how AI is being deployed to improve search, recommendations, and advertising efficiency:
"We're deploying AI solution to help us to target our user a lot more efficient when users search us. And when people come to our app, we can recommend more accurate products to them and also help us to have better efficiency on the ad product."
The company also uses AI to enable sellers to create video content without studio setups. In Q2 2025, orders from livestreaming and short-form videos accounted for more than 20% of Shopee's total order volume in Southeast Asia.
Ask Fintool AI AgentSea's Financial Momentum
Sea enters the partnership with strong operational momentum. Quarterly revenue has grown from $4.95 billion in Q4 2024 to $5.99 billion in Q3 2025, a 21% increase over three quarters.*
| Metric | Q4 2024 | Q1 2025 | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue ($B) | $4.95* | $4.84* | $5.26* | $5.99* |
| Net Income ($M) | $237* | $403* | $414* | $375* |
| EBITDA Margin % | 8.1%* | 11.3%* | 9.3%* | 8.0%* |
| Gross Margin % | 44.6%* | 46.2%* | 45.8%* | 43.4%* |
*Values retrieved from S&P Global.
The company has turned consistently profitable after years of losses, with net income positive for four consecutive quarters. However, Sea's stock has declined roughly 26% from its August 2025 highs of $154 to around $115, creating potential upside if the AI partnership delivers tangible results.
Building on Existing Ties
This isn't the first collaboration between the companies. In 2024, Shopee and YouTube launched a partnership allowing creators to embed shopping links in videos across Southeast Asia. By June 2025, more than 7 million YouTube videos featured Shopee product links, an increase of more than 50% quarter-over-quarter.
Sea has also previously partnered with OpenAI. In February 2025, Shopee tested OpenAI's Operator AI agent for autonomous online shopping, with the collaboration later expanding to payments and distribution.
The multi-partner approach suggests Sea is positioning itself as an AI-agnostic platform, leveraging capabilities from Google, OpenAI, and potentially others to stay ahead in the AI commerce race.
Ask Fintool AI AgentWhat to Watch
The key question is whether agentic AI can meaningfully improve Shopee's unit economics. Sea has already achieved positive EBITDA margins by optimizing costs through AI-powered customer service automation and listing management.
For the partnership to move the needle, the AI shopping prototype will need to demonstrate measurably higher conversion rates and basket sizes. Sea management has emphasized that all AI investments are measured against clear ROI metrics:
"Typically, for this investment, we always have a very clear ROI measurement for any of the investment... we measure the return of investment through our click-through rate, measure our investment through our conversion rate."
Investors should watch for:
- Timeline: When the AI shopping prototype moves from exploration to deployment
- Metrics: Conversion rates and average order values for AI-assisted purchases vs traditional
- Competitive response: How Alibaba's Lazada and TikTok Shop counter with their own AI capabilities
- Margin impact: Whether AI automation continues to drive cost efficiencies
The partnership also has implications for Google, which is competing with Microsoft (through OpenAI), Amazon, and other tech giants to establish AI as a core enterprise offering. A successful Shopee deployment would validate Google's AI capabilities for large-scale consumer applications.
Ask Fintool AI AgentRelated