Sea is rolling out Codex across its developer organisation, with our internal data showing 87% of users are weekly active users. For the company, AI-assisted software development is not simply a way to improve productivity at the margins, but a deeper shift in how engineering teams navigate complexity, build resilient systems, and move from ideas to implementation.

We spoke with David Chen, Co-Founder of Sea and Chief Product Officer at Sea's e-commerce business, Shopee, about why the company is making this bet, how AI agents are changing how its developers work, and what AI-native software development could mean for Southeast Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region.

At Sea’s scale, engineering isn't just about writing code. It’s about managing large-scale systemic complexity across fragmented, hyper-localized markets. We see the ongoing developments in AI leading to a fundamental shift in how software is created and how our engineering teams operate at scale.

Agentic AI coding tools like Codex are not just about improving localised productivity. They represent a structural multiplier that can help our engineering organisation ramp up speed, responsiveness, and effectiveness amid an increasingly complex operating environment.