Amazon first reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion in 2018.
The milestone occurred on September 4, 2018, when Amazon’s share price rose above roughly $2,050.27, the level that put the company’s total equity value over $1 trillion. Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying a company’s share price by its outstanding shares, so this figure reflects investors’ valuation of Amazon rather than cash held in its bank accounts or annual sales.
Amazon became the second U.S. company to reach the trillion-dollar market-cap milestone, following Apple’s achievement in August 2018. Its rise reflected a transformation far beyond online bookselling: Amazon had expanded into third-party commerce, logistics, advertising, devices, digital media, and Amazon Web Services, its highly profitable cloud-computing division.
The threshold was briefly crossed during intraday trading, and the stock later dipped below it before returning above the mark several times. That does not make 2018 incorrect: the question asks when Amazon first reached the valuation. Amazon crossed the same milestone again in early 2020 after strong fourth-quarter results.