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SINGAPORE: E-commerce giant Shopee has slashed jobs in Singapore amid its latest foray into artificial intelligence, stating that the cuts come after\u00a0a\u00a0regular review of business operations.<\/p>\n
Responding to media queries on Wednesday (Jun 10), a Shopee spokesperson said the company regularly assesses its \u201cstaffing needs\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom time to time, departments may make adjustments based on operational and business priorities,\u201d said the spokesperson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese decisions are always made after careful consideration. For colleagues affected by any changes, Shopee is committed to providing support during this period of transition.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not clear how many employees in Singapore have been affected.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Shopee was cutting hundreds of developer roles globally, amounting to about 8 per cent of its developer workforce.<\/p>\n
Shopee, which dominates Southeast Asia\u2019s e-commerce market, is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in more than 20 cities around the world.<\/p>\n
The company had cut jobs in 2022 amid falling profitability and the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
The latest round of job cuts in the Singapore headquarters was confirmed to CNA by two software engineers who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Both employees learnt that they had been laid off on Monday.<\/p>\n
One of the software engineers was informed on the company\u2019s instant messaging platform first, before an in-person meeting with the human resources department.<\/p>\n
Affected employees were told they will receive an \u201cN+2\u201d severance package, or one month of salary for each year of service plus another two months of pay, this engineer said.<\/p>\n
The two engineers were unaware of how many staff members were affected in the latest round of cuts.<\/p>\n
A third employee whose role was unaffected by the news told CNA that there was no townhall meeting or company-wide email communicating the news to all employees.<\/p>\n
This employee knew of at least 10 affected colleagues in Shopee\u2019s Singapore office, and said that they were mostly in the product and engineering teams.<\/p>\n
Shopee’s parent company Sea is not unionised in Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the company informed the Creative Media and Publishing Union (CMPU) in advance about a \u201cworkforce adjustment affecting certain employees\u201d, a union spokesperson said in response to queries.<\/span><\/p>\n “Advance notification has enabled CMPU to work closely with management to better support affected employees through this challenging period,” said the spokesperson. This includes ensuring fair compensation packages are offered.<\/span><\/p>\n The spokesperson also said CMPU representatives were on site during the layoff exercise to provide assistance.<\/p>\n Shopee\u2019s parent company is Sea, the global technology company listed in New York.<\/p>\n The company also owns games developer Garena and digital financial services business Monee.<\/p>\n In 2025, Sea\u2019s CEO Forrest Li reportedly spoke about the company\u2019s structural push towards artificial intelligence, stating in a memo to employees that a trillion-dollar market capitalisation is possible if it doubles down on AI and can \u201cmake the right calls\u201d.<\/p>\n Bloomberg reported last month that the company had committed capital towards internal and external AI projects, as part of moves to find growth outside of e-commerce.<\/p>\n In April, Sea established an Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence in Singapore with support from Digital Industry Singapore (DISG) \u2013 a joint office by the Economic Development Board, Enterprise Singapore and Infocomm Media Development Authority.<\/p>\n \u201cAs AI continues to evolve, we see it as a foundational capability that strengthens how we build innovative products, operate at a global scale, and create value for the countless communities we serve,\u201d said Mr Li during the centre\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n The AI push comes as the firm reported higher profits while also spending significantly more in the latest quarter.<\/p>\n Sea\u2019s operating expenses surged 43.4 per cent year-on-year to almost US$2.6 billion (S$3.3 billion) in the first quarter of 2026, with the cost of revenue also increasing by 51.7 per cent to US$4 billion.<\/p>\n The company nonetheless posted higher earnings, with net income increasing 6.7 per cent year-on-year to reach US$438.2 million.<\/p>\n Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) went up by 9.3 per cent to reach US$1 billion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE: E-commerce giant Shopee has slashed jobs in Singapore amid its latest foray into artificial intelligence, stating that the cuts come after\u00a0a\u00a0regular review of business…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--074jTGG---\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/10\/image.png?itok=fR5NI4KH","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[745,642,2603,1244,5639,2362,22,10954,4392],"class_list":["post-59635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-affected","tag-among","tag-engineers","tag-jobs","tag-push","tag-shopee","tag-singapore","tag-slashes","tag-software","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}PIVOT TOWARDS AI<\/h2>\n
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