---
endpoint: analytics
pattern: Internet
status: done
latency_ms: 171785
conversation_id: 38480867-3560-4e98-9652-f6db61ce40f3
citations: 9
created: 2026-05-31 19:29:54Z
---

# Who are the key customers and suppliers of Sea Limited?

# Sea Limited (SE) — Key Customers and Suppliers

Sea Limited is a holding company with three operating segments — **Shopee** (e-commerce), **Garena** (digital entertainment), and **SeaMoney / Monee** (digital financial services / DFS) [3]. Because Sea is a platform business rather than a traditional industrial manufacturer, "customers" and "suppliers" map to **users and merchants on Shopee**, **gamers and game licensors at Garena**, and **users and funding/payment counterparties at Monee**.

---

## 1. Key Customers (Demand-Side)

### a) Shopee — Consumers and Merchants
- **End-consumer buyers** are the primary customer base. Monthly active buyers and average monthly purchase frequency rose **15% and 10% YoY** respectively in 2025, with management targeting **>25% Shopee GMV growth in 2026** [8].
- **Merchants/sellers are also paying customers** of Shopee — they buy advertising, fulfillment, and value-added services. Ad-paying sellers grew **>10% YoY** and ad-paying revenue per seller rose **>25% YoY** in 3Q24; ad take-rate has risen >30bp YoY, driven by improvements in ad tech, seller onboarding, and traffic-allocation algorithms [12].
- **Brand customers**: large brands use Shopee as a sales channel. A notable recent example is **Huawei eKit**, which launched its first e-commerce store outside China on Shopee Thailand in partnership with AIOT, selling switches, WLANs, and routers to SMEs [2].
- **VIP / loyalty buyers**: Shopee VIP membership is a stated 2026 investment priority [8].

### b) Garena — Gamers
- **Free Fire is the anchor customer base**, reaching **>100 million daily active users globally**; management treats it as a "platform" rather than a single title [4]. Free Fire's full-year bookings were guided to grow **>30% YoY** in 2024 [12].
- Gamers across **Southeast Asia, Latin America (especially Brazil), India, and other emerging markets** form the global user base [5]. Esports and community events (e.g., **Free Fire World Series**; **Garena World** event in Bangkok / Thailand) deepen engagement [10].

### c) Monee / SeaMoney (DFS) — Borrowers and Payment Users
- DFS customers are **predominantly Shopee buyers and sellers**, leveraging the Shopee ecosystem for credit, BNPL, and digital payments. CLSA frames the strategic case as "deeper penetration into the Shopee ecosystem with improving product mix" driving DFS topline and EBITDA [3].

---

## 2. Key Suppliers / Strategic Partners (Supply-Side)

### a) Shopee — Merchant Supply, Logistics, and Brand Partners
- **Third-party sellers (3P merchants)** are the **core "supply" of inventory** to the Shopee marketplace. Sea's model charges sellers fees and outsources logistics — described as "somewhat like a [tinier] model" — with marketplace revenue split between transaction/ad fees and value-added services [4][9].
- **Logistics suppliers (dual-track)**:
  - **In-house — SPX Express**: now Sea's primary logistics arm, processing **>30 million parcels per day on average** in 2025, making it "one of the largest e-commerce logistics solution providers" in its markets [8]. SPX delivers **>50% of Shopee orders** across Asia and Brazil [7].
  - **Third-party logistics (3PL) partners**: Sea continues to "work closely with our third-party logistics partners" as a complement to SPX, particularly for capacity in peak season or specific lanes [5][11]. Historically Shopee has "primarily worked with third-party logistics services providers" with first-party as complementary capacity [5].
- **Grocery / instant-delivery suppliers**: in Thailand, Shopee **partners with local supermarkets and suppliers** to deliver fresh groceries in as little as one hour, expanding instant-delivery use cases [8].
- **Content creators and influencers**: YouTube creators and live-streamers act as a marketing "supply" — Shopee sellers pay creators on commission rather than fixed upfront fees on YouTube Shopping; video commerce accounted for **~20% of regional GMV** in 2024 [2].

### b) Garena — Game IP Licensors and Co-development Partners
- **Tencent (700.HK) — the most important supplier and 10% strategic shareholder**: Tencent owns **~10% of Sea** (vs. founder & management ~53%) and is Garena's principal long-term game-publishing partner [1]. Tencent supplies key licensed IP that Garena publishes locally, including **Speed Drifters** (Tencent's racing IP, where Garena and Tencent explored Latin America launch jointly) [4].
- **Activision (via Tencent)** — Garena licenses and operates **Call of Duty: Mobile** in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, "tailoring the content for our local markets in partnership with Tencent and Activision" [6].
- **Top global game developers more broadly** — Garena's publishing model is to "work with the world's top developers to bring the highest-quality titles to our markets" [10].
- **Marketing / brand partners for Free Fire**:
  - **DJ Alok** (Brazilian DJ, made a playable Free Fire character and music partner) — anchoring LatAm community engagement [10].
  - **India Today** — media partner for the Free Fire World Series India qualifiers [10].
- **Third-party content creators/game developers** — Sea is opening Free Fire as a platform, with third-party creators building experiences inside the Free Fire universe [4].

### c) Monee — Funding and Payments Counterparties
- Monee's business is tightly integrated with the **Shopee buyer/seller ecosystem** rather than a broad bank-partnership model — CLSA highlights "strong synergy with the Shopee ecosystem" and values Monee at a ~20% premium to gaming/fintech peers on that basis [3]. (Specific bank funding-line partners are not disclosed at the segment level in the documents reviewed.)

---

## 3. Strategic Map — Who Matters Most

| Counterparty | Role | Segment | Strategic weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Shopee buyers (~SE Asia/Brazil consumers)** | Customer | Shopee | Core demand, MAB +15% YoY 2025 [8] |
| **Shopee 3P sellers / brand merchants** | Customer (fees) AND supplier (inventory) | Shopee | Source of GMV; ad-paying sellers +10% YoY [12] |
| **SPX Express (in-house)** | Logistics supplier | Shopee | >30m parcels/day; >50% of orders [7][8] |
| **3PL partners** | Logistics supplier | Shopee | Complementary capacity [5][11] |
| **Tencent (700.HK)** | 10% shareholder; key game IP licensor (Speed Drifters, CoD: Mobile via Activision) | Garena | Single most important supplier relationship [1][4][6] |
| **Activision** | Game IP licensor (Call of Duty: Mobile) | Garena | High-value licensed IP [6] |
| **Free Fire players (>100m DAU)** | Customer | Garena | Largest single user pool [4] |
| **Brand/content partners (Huawei eKit, DJ Alok, India Today, YouTube creators)** | Marketing / supply-side | Shopee + Garena | Localization and content depth [2][10] |
| **Shopee ecosystem (buyers + sellers)** | Customer base | Monee | DFS cross-sell engine [3] |

---

## 4. Investment-Relevant Takeaways

- The single most strategically meaningful **supplier** is **Tencent** — both 10% shareholder and the source of major licensed gaming IP, including the Tencent-Activision Call of Duty: Mobile distribution and Tencent's own Speed Drifters [1][6][4].
- The most strategically meaningful **customer cohort** is **Shopee monthly active buyers in Asia and Brazil**, monetized through a rising take rate (commission + advertising) [12], with **Shopee merchants** being the linchpin "two-sided" counterparty — they are simultaneously customers (paying ads/fees) and suppliers (providing inventory).
- **Logistics insourcing via SPX Express** has shifted Sea from a 3PL-dependent model (2019–2021) to one where **SPX handles more than half of Shopee's parcels** — reducing supplier dependency and creating a structural moat [5][7][8][11].
- **Garena's third-party publishing pipeline** depends heavily on continued access to Tencent IP and other global publishers; the Free Fire platform itself is increasingly Sea's own self-developed evergreen IP, reducing Garena's external-supplier risk over time [4][10].

---

**Sources**
[1] Sea Limited – O-PF (Firing on all cylinders) — CLSA (14 May 2025) — 607959388LinqAlpha.PDF
[2] Singapore Internet (Asean e-conomy) — CLSA (20 May 2025) — 607959953LinqAlpha.PDF
[3] Sea Limited – O-PF (Firing on all cylinders) — CLSA (14 May 2025) — 607959388LinqAlpha.PDF (investment thesis)
[4] Q1 2019 Sea Limited — Earnings Call
[5] Q1 2021 Sea Limited — Earnings Call
[6] Q3 2019 Sea Limited — Earnings Call (Call of Duty: Mobile partnership)
[7] Sea Ltd. Q3 2025 Earnings Call (11 November 2025)
[8] Sea Ltd. Q4 2025 Earnings Call (3 March 2026)
[9] Q3 2022 Sea Limited — Earnings Call
[10] Q3 2019 Sea Limited — Earnings Call (DJ Alok / India Today / global developers)
[11] Q1 2023 Sea Limited — Earnings Call
[12] Q3 2024 Sea Limited — Earnings Call

## Citations

- [4] **Q1 2019 Sea Limited** · external
- [5] **Q1 2021 Sea Limited** · external
- [6] **Q3 2019 Sea Limited** · external
- [7] **Sea Ltd. , Q3 2025 Earnings Call, 11-November-2025 7** · external
- [8] **Sea Ltd. , Q4 2025 Earnings Call, 3-March-2026 7** · external
- [9] **Q3 2022 Sea Limited** · external
- [10] **Q3 2019 Sea Limited** · external
- [11] **Q1 2023 Sea Limited** · external
- [12] **Q3 2024 Sea Limited** · external

