Sea, the owner of Shopee, which is one of the largest ecommerce platforms in Southeast Asia, expanded the company’s partnership with Google. Specifically, the pair of companies will collaborate on three main business lines, which are gaming, agentic commerce, and agentic payments.
Google and Sea Expand Partnership to Advance the Development of AI Innovations
In a recent blog post, Sea announced that the company is deepening its partnership with Google. This move was primarily done to advance the development of different AI innovations across Sea’s core business lines.
Sea is the company that owns and launched Shopee, which is a leading mobile-first ecommerce platform in Southeast Asia that has hundreds of millions of users. It also operates and is the parent organization for Monee, a digital financial services provider, and Garena, an online game developer and publisher.
This deal between Google and Sea builds on the existing partnership between the two companies, which has included initiatives like Free Fire League on Google Play with Garena, and the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program with Shopee.
The move also comes just after Google joined forces with Canadian retail giant Loblaw in an AI shopping partnership, showing that Google is staying active when it comes to helping organizations with their agentic commerce capabilities.
The Companies Will Collaborate Across Three Main Business Lines
Sea believes that AI is the next big technology revolution, and the company thinks it has the potential to transform its business and deliver value. Specifically, Google and Sea will explore ways to advance AI-powered innovations across gaming, ecommerce, and payments.
For gaming, Garena and Google are looking to find ways for Google’s AI solutions to improve the experiences of gamers. Also, the companies are planning to leverage AI to boost productivity when it comes to game development and operations. In addition to that, Garena will also be able to participate in early access pilots for Google’s AI research projects.
While Garena and Google are planning to use AI for improving productivity for game development, the same technology may be used in any industry for almost any purpose. Ecommerce brands of all kinds can use AI to improve efficiency, provide support, personalize customer experiences, predict demand, detect fraud, and more.
For ecommerce, Google and Shopee will explore the building of an AI agentic shopping prototype that’s able to seamlessly integrate into platforms to try and boost ecommerce discovery, engagement, and the shopping experience in general.
Agentic commerce is a huge trend in the ecommerce space and is expected to grow rapidly. Some forecasts even project that it’ll make up between 15% and 25% of total US ecommerce sales by 2030. Customers are also becoming more comfortable with agentic commerce, as 77% of consumers are open to using certain agentic features.
For payments, Google and Monee will collaborate on the open and shared Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), where Monee will provide feedback on AP2 and help it remain secure, robust, and suitable for the diverse digital financial landscape in the region. The companies also have the intention to explore an agentic payment experience across their platforms, as well.
I believe this partnership makes plenty of sense, as Sea clearly sees the value of AI across the organization, and decided to partner with one of the leaders in the space, Google. For Google, it allows the company to secure a greater position in the growing digital economy of Southeast Asia, and partner with one of the largest organizations in the industry.
