Amazon became the second U.S. public company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, after Apple, in 2018.
Amazon crossed the threshold on September 4, 2018, roughly one month after Apple reached the same landmark. Investors had rewarded the company’s rapid expansion beyond online retail, especially in cloud computing, digital advertising, logistics, and subscription services.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore and began operating from Bellevue, Washington. Its later transformation into a broad technology and commerce company made its market value far larger than the value implied by book sales alone.
The company’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services, became especially important to its financial profile. Market capitalization still reflects investor expectations about the whole company, rather than the value of any single division.