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Over the next three years, the AI CoE is expected to create demand for at least 100 R&D and innovation-centric roles in Singapore, with activities spanning AI research, engineering, and product development.
Sea Limited, a Singapore-based tech conglomerate operating in digital entertainment, e-commerce, and digital financial services, has established an Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI CoE) in the country.
The aim of the AI CoE will be to support continuous breakthroughs in both the research and business application of AI, as well as contribute towards strategic capability building in three key areas:
- Foundational AI: Advancing foundation model development, evaluation frameworks, and internal tooling to stay close to frontier developments in the field.
- Scalable deployment: Translating R&D advances into production-ready solutions that can be sustainably deployed at scale to enhance user experience, efficiency, and other measurable business outcomes.
- AI-native talent and new operating models: Nurturing a pool of AI-native talent and experimenting with new operating models enabled by AI technologies.
Over the next three years, the AI CoE is expected to create demand for at least 100 R&D and innovation-centric roles in Singapore, with activities spanning AI research, engineering, and product development.
With support of from the Digital Industry Singapore (DISG), a joint office by Singapore Economic Development Board, Enterprise Singapore, and Infocomm Media Development Authority, Sea's AI CoE aims to deepen homegrown AI capabilities, accelerate enterprise adoption of AI, and develop an AI-ready talent pool, while aligning with Singapore's National AI Strategy 2.0 and Budget 2026 priorities.
Forrest Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sea Limited, said the AI CoE reflects the company’s long-term commitment to Singapore.
"Such homegrown AI capabilities also contribute to the wider AI ecosystem in Singapore, which we are excited to partner with the government on growing and developing."
Philbert Gomez, Senior Vice President, Executive Director and Head, Digital Industry Singapore added: "This investment by Sea strengthens our position as a global AI hub with cutting-edge capabilities in Singapore.
"The new AI CoE will create new innovation roles in areas such as AI engineering and product development, providing Singaporeans an opportunity to create AI products with a global reach."
Through sustained investment in R&D, the AI CoE is also expected to "deepen the sophistication and application of Sea’s growing stable of in-house AI models." These include self-developed foundation models such as Compass Max v3.5, a 245bn-parameter large language model (LLM) tailored for Southeast Asian languages and e-commerce contexts.
Compass Max v3.5 and its variants are already in live use for numerous AI features across Sea subsidiary Shopee’s e-commerce platform.
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Lead image / Sea Limited
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