Singapore – Sea and OpenAI are expanding their strategic partnership, bringing ChatGPT-powered shopping experiences to Shopee users across Southeast Asia and Brazil while equipping sellers with AI tools to grow their businesses.
The collaboration marks a significant step in Sea’s ambition to embed artificial intelligence across its ecosystem spanning e-commerce, digital financial services, and gaming. It also signals OpenAI’s growing push to integrate its technology into everyday consumer experiences beyond standalone chat interfaces.
Under the new agreement, the Shopee app is now available in ChatGPT for users in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Brazil.
According to Sea, this makes Shopee the first e-commerce platform of its kind to be accessible across Southeast Asia and Latin America through ChatGPT.
The integration allows users to discover products using natural language prompts. Consumers can ask ChatGPT for gift ideas, travel essentials, fashion inspiration, or help finding niche products, before seamlessly continuing their purchase journey on Shopee.
“Sea has always focused on using technology to improve the lives of consumers and small businesses across our markets,” said Forrest Li, Chairman and CEO of Sea.
“Our strategic partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared commitment to making AI more accessible and meaningful for the communities we serve. By combining OpenAI’s advanced AI capabilities with Sea’s vibrant ecosystem, we hope to deliver more intuitive AI-native experiences for consumers while enabling businesses of all sizes to use AI to grow and stay competitive in the digital economy,” he added.
Beyond consumer discovery, the partnership also targets small businesses operating on Shopee.
Sea plans to introduce ChatGPT for Business to its seller ecosystem, enabling merchants to use AI for tasks such as creating product listings and marketing content, improving customer service workflows, and automating day-to-day operations.
Eligible sellers will receive trial access, alongside onboarding support, training programmes, and best-practice guides designed to accelerate adoption.
The announcement builds on an existing relationship between the two companies. Since 2025, Sea and OpenAI have worked together to broaden access to ChatGPT through marketing promotions and ShopeeVIP membership benefits.
OpenAI’s Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser said embedding AI into familiar platforms can help users unlock more practical value from the technology.
“Sea has built an extraordinary ecosystem across some of the world’s most dynamic digital markets,” she said.
“By bringing OpenAI’s technology into the products and services people already use, we can make AI more useful and accessible in their everyday lives. This partnership will help more consumers discover new AI-powered experiences, give small businesses practical tools to grow, and enable more people to put AI to work as an operating layer across the company and the broader builder ecosystem.”
The partnership also extends to developer communities. Earlier this year, Sea and OpenAI launched the first regional Codex Hackathon series in Asia Pacific. The initiative kicked off in Singapore in June, attracting more than 1,200 applications and 40 shortlisted teams. Additional hackathons are planned across Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
The latest move underscores a broader shift in how AI is reshaping commerce. As consumers increasingly rely on conversational interfaces to discover products and businesses seek productivity gains through automation, companies are racing to integrate AI directly into the customer journey.
For Sea, the partnership represents another milestone in its evolution into an AI-native business. For OpenAI, it offers a pathway to bring its technology to millions of users across some of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies.
