Amazon first became a publicly traded company in 1997.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookseller, originally operating under the name Cadabra before becoming Amazon. The company held its initial public offering on May 15, 1997, and its shares began trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker AMZN.
Amazon expanded far beyond books. Its business later included online retail, third-party marketplace services, logistics, digital entertainment, advertising, and Amazon Web Services. That diversification helped transform the company from a young internet retailer into one of the world’s largest public companies by market capitalization.
The year 1994 is a common mix-up because it is Amazon’s founding year, not its stock-market debut. An IPO makes shares available to public investors; it does not mark the company’s creation. Market capitalization changes after listing as the share price and share count change.