Sea Limited

The founder

Forrest Li, born Li Xiaodong in Tianjin, China, studied at Shanghai Jiao Tong University before earning an MBA at Stanford, where he says a Steve Jobs commencement speech pushed him toward entrepreneurship. He moved to Singapore, became a citizen, and founded gaming company Garena in 2009, later renaming the parent company Sea Limited — a nod to "Southeast Asia" — ahead of its 2017 IPO.

How it was taken public

Sea Limited listed on the NYSE on October 20, 2017, pricing at $15 a share and raising $884 million at an initial valuation of roughly $4.9 billion, backed heavily by early investor Tencent. It was one of the largest US listings by a Southeast Asian company at the time, laying the foundation for Sea to later become the region’s most valuable listed company on the back of Shopee’s e-commerce dominance.