Southeast Asia’s Biggest Internet Firm Has Laid Off 7,000 Workers

Sea Ltd., Southeast Asia’s largest internet company by revenue and market value, has laid off more than 7,000 employees, or around 10% of its workforce, over the past six months, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Sea, a Nasdaq-listed company whose shareholders include Tencent, BlackRock and T. Rowe Price, had been seen as one of Southeast Asia’s tech success stories, commended for its operation of an e-commerce app, Shopee, and a videogame business, Garena. But it’s also one of a number of high-flying tech companies that in recent years had burned through massive amounts of money as it tried to grow quickly—a strategy that proved unsustainable as interest rates soared this year and the economy slowed.